Friday 9 May 2008

YouGov reports 26 per cent lead for Conservatives

The latest YouGov poll is putting the Conservatives on 49 per cent with a 26 per cent lead over Labour:

Lead

This would imply a clear Conservative victory at Crewe and Nantwich and Dave himself has said that a failure to win would be a 'bad' result. Labour is trying to portray the Conservative candidate as a 'Tory toff' from a Cheshire commuter village. Whilst having people going round dressed up in top hats and tails is mildly amusing, I am doubtful whether it will shift any votes.

We have to remember that a general election is now probably two years away and a lot could happen in the meantime. No doubt there will be a revival of speculation about Gordon Brown's leadership, but 70 Labour MPs would be required to mount a challenge against him.

When I was in Canada recently, I was interested to read that a political leader was allowed one attempt to get elected. Brown hasn't even had that. At one time, leaders were given several chances - Attlee led his party in four elections, twice to victory and twice to defeat. Heath contested four and won one. Wilson contested five and won four. Mrs Thatcher was, of course, never defeated at the polls.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't read the Sun (honest!!!) but I have heard they are switching to YouGov as their pollster. If so, there will be 3YouGov polls per month (they also do them for the Times and the Telegraph, I think). Given the impact polls can have on the political climate and the large Conservative leads YouGov are currently producing this could perhaps be of some importance.