Incredibly, a poll conducted over the last five days has given the Tories a 10-point lead over Labour despite the general chaos enveloping the Government over Brexit. The Tories racked up 41% to Labour’s 31%, with the gap widening 5 points on the previous month. The TIGgers weren’t included in the main Kantar/TNS poll although ‘Other’ only came in with 2%. The fact that Labour are 10 points behind one of the most shambolic governments in history is an embarrassment of the highest order…
The narrative is starting to become fashionable that it will somehow be Brexiteers’ fault if Brexit doesn’t happen. If there is any truth to this at all it is only because Brexiteers have been forced into such a dire position than they are increasingly facing a terrible dilemma of voting for May’s deal against their consciences or risking an even worse Brexit outcome. Trying to pin the blame on them for staying loyal for so long to a Government that was systematically pulling the wool over their eyes is a questionable reimagining of history…
It turns out actual Brexit voters don’t agree either. YouGov asked Leave voters who they would “consider to be responsible” if Brexit ends up not taking place. In top spot, with 82% saying they would bear “a lot” or “some” of the responsibility, were “MPs who opposed Theresa May’s Brexit deal because they wanted to stop Brexit.” In second place was the EU itself, with 80% giving them the blame, while 80% also blamed MPs who wanted a softer Brexit, although to a lesser degree.
Jeremy Corbyn and “the media” also shoulder a lot of the blame, Theresa May gets off lightly in relative terms. Leave voters are also largely sympathetic towards MPs who opposed the deal because they wanted a ‘harder’ Brexit or no deal at all, only 29% and 26% give them “a lot” of responsibility if that leads to Brexit not happening. Fundamentally it is a collective failure of the political class who gave the decision to the people but still haven’t been able to come to terms with the fact that the people didn’t give answer they wanted…
The pollsters have been quick off the mark to gauge the level of public support for a ‘New Centrist Party Opposed to Brexit’, even though the new Independents Group has not yet formally formed a party. Survation found that the theoretical new party would already attract the support of 8%, jumping straight into third place ahead of the Lib Dems:
Helpfully, they also conducted a second poll at the same time without the new centrist party, which gives a good indication of where their votes are coming from. The Lib Dems are hit hardest, losing almost half of their vote share (4%) to the new party, while Labour lose 2% and the Conservatives drop 1%. Not a compelling argument in favour of the Tories softening their position on Brexit…
Worryingly for Corbyn, the public is broadly supportive of the MPs’ decision to splinter away from Labour. Survation found 56% thought they were right to split, with only 20% opposed, while a separate YouGov poll found a 46%-13% split on the same question. On the question of which “best represents the people of Britain”, Survation found 40% favoured the new Independent Group while only 23% chose the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. For the few, not the many…
Despite a never-ending series of threats from giant EU-funded corporations and even warnings that 12,000 people will die from lack of fruit, the latest Sky Data poll has found that No Deal is still the most popular Brexit option. When asked to choose between the three options, 39% of voters favoured no deal, ahead of 34% who supported May’s deal with the backstop removed, and only 27% who backed May’s original deal with the backstop. Almost three-quarters of voters prefer either no backstop or no deal…
Voters also agreed by a margin of almost 3:1 that “people who say we should delay Brexit by extending Article 50 are… trying to stop Brexit entirely”. Cooper and Boles not doing a good job of pulling the wool over people’s eyes…
Interesting polling by Number Cruncher Politics which asked voters to choose their least acceptable Brexit outcomes rather than just their favourites. The study reveals that remaining in the EU is the least acceptable Brexit outcome to the British electorate, ahead of both No Deal (unacceptable to only 39%), and May’s Withdrawal Agreement (unacceptable to just 30%). Not surprising given the rabble that are running Remain…
A new ICM Poll alarmed the Guardian last night, with No Deal being the public’s leading option as to what should happen next. It’s also the legal default as long as Parliamentary deadlock continues…
Whilst a cleaner Brexit is comfortably popular among the public, according to Election Maps UK, just 116 MPs support it. This is despite 498 MPs voting to set No Deal as the legal default when they triggered Article 50…
Despite the constant claims of Continuity Remainers that people have changed their minds on Brexit, polls have consistently failed to show any significant shifts in public support for leaving the EU since the referendum. That’s before considering the large proportion of Remain voters who accept the result even though they still don’t support Brexit itself…
The latest ComRes poll asked voters whether they wanted to see the referendum result respected and found a clear majority in favour. Excluding ‘don’t knows’ (18%), 65% of people agreed that the result should be respected, while only 35% disagreed. Remoaners’ tasteless stunts are doing little to change people’s minds…
Theresa May’s hopes that her MPs will have come back from their Christmas breaks in their constituencies feeling more sympathetic towards her Brexit deal have been dealt a fresh blow by the latest round of ESRC Party Members data. The YouGov study found that in a three-way choice, 57% of Tory Party members would back no deal, while only 23% would support her deal. Just 15% supported remaining in the EU outright…
The backstop was particularly unpopular, with only 11% of Tory Party members saying that they thought the backstop made sense at all. Not surprising when the UK, EU and Ireland have all committed to not putting up a hard border whatever happens. May is going to need more than just “Operation Figleaf” to get her deal through…
Survation have done something interesting, they have polled 862 Tory councillors on their preference for the next Tory leader. Using a run-off single transferable vote method they looked into who would win. First preferences gave a close lead for Sajid Javid of 150 to 142.
After transferring votes Sajid sucks up the majority of third-placed Hunt’s votes and wins decisively. This is an interesting exercise that doesn’t exactly mirror the actual Tory election process which has MPs select two candidates to put before the wider Tory membership. What it does show is that in an open field the race would likely be between Johnson & Javid. The survey reinforces the findings of the ConservativeHome surveys that it should be a two-horse race. Whether Tory MPs agree is another matter…
Watch Survation’s explainer video here.
MPs will be getting the chance to vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal… at some point within the next six weeks according to her spokesman, who has confirmed that the vote will be held before January 21. Of course, her spokesman was insisting 24 hours ago that the vote was going ahead today…
Had MPs been able to vote the deal down today as expected, the British public would have been behind them. The latest Lord Ashcroft poll found voters against the deal by more than a margin of 2 to 1, with 53% in favour of MPs voting to “reject the Brexit agreement even if it is not clear what the outcome would then be” compared to only 24% in favour of MPs voting to “accept the Brexit agreement as an imperfect compromise and move on to other issues”. Opposition to the deal has grown in the three weeks since Ashcroft first asked the question, with a 9% swing against the deal. Voters aren’t falling for May’s strategy of boring them into backing the deal…
Voters’ responses to what they considered the most important Brexit outcomes were also very revealing. The most important outcome among Leave and Remain voters combined was “the UK being able to do its own free trade deals with countries outside the EU”, ahead of “continuing to trade freely with EU countries with no tariffs or customs checks”. May’s approach has been the other way round…
Both Tory and Labour Leave voters agreed that the most important issue was “the UK making all its own laws and no longer being subject to rulings from the European Court of Justice” – ending free movement was only ranked as the fifth most important issue. Once again proving the Remainer narrative wrong that the Leave vote was nothing more than a small-minded backlash against immigration…
Remainers went all People’s Vote of Judea on each other this morning, with People’s Vote hilariously attacking the Lib Dems for tabling a “deeply unhelpful” second referendum amendment, accusing them of “political point scoring” and whinging about it being “deeply unfair”. Snigger…
The latest polling from IpsosMORI won’t have made Anna Soubry’s birthday any better either. While over six in ten Brits (62%) think May’s deal will be “bad for the UK as a whole” with only 25% believing it will be good, there is no clear support for a second referendum or cancelling Brexit either if the deal is voted down:
Only 20% of people are in favour of a second referendum on leaving the EU altogether, while the same number would back leaving without a deal at all. A mere 10% back Labour’s preferred option of a general election, while a further 10% would back a referendum on whether or not to accept the deal itself.
The most likely outcomes, that the Government either seeks to reopen negotiations with the EU or a second vote in Parliament is held on substantially the same deal, are also pretty low-scoring, notching up only 19% and 6% support each. The bottom line is that we are in unchartered waters – nobody knows what is going to happen, but it is simply not true for Remainers to claim that there is a clear majority for a second referendum on leaving the EU…
This poll out this morning from Ashcroft’s polling might surprise readers of the Daily Mail and others who are lapping up the superficially appealing line, delivered to camera from Downing Street by May, that the British people just want the government to “get on with it”. They don’t want them to get on with this deal. The British people overwhelmingly want MPs to reject the agreement.
By 46% to 26% they want MPs to reject the Withdrawal Agreement, if you exclude don’t knows that is 64% of the British people want MPs to reject the agreement – an almost 2 to 1 margin. Both Remain and Leave voters overwhelmingly dislike the deal…
A strong warning against a second referendum came from an unlikely source on Question Time last night as Diane Abbott told Remainers to “be careful what you wish for”:
“What I say to people calling for a second referendum now is you should be careful what you wish for, because my suspicion is that if we had a second referendum now, the same people that voted Leave – who are not largely speaking in London – would vote Leave again, saying ‘didn’t you hear us the first time?'”
Didn’t she get Keir’s memo about “constructive ambiguity”?
However it turns out that Diane may be more in tune with the public mood than many of her fellow North London Labour colleagues, as a new Hanbury/Politico poll this morning revealed that just 9% of voters want a second referendum if MPs vote down Theresa May’s Brexit Deal. 34% say we should just leave with no deal…
The Tories have received a boost ahead of the budget as a new Deltapoll survey for the Mirror has found them surging up 6% to 43% with Labour remaining unchanged on 40%. This is despite the backdrop of constant Tory infighting over Brexit. Either voters aren’t that bothered or they’ve just stopped paying attention…
There is little solace for Remainers either, with only 26% of people saying that Brexit should be abandoned altogether. However there is scant support for May’s current Brexit approach either, with 14% saying she should “go back to the drawing board and come up with a more acceptable plan” and 22% in favour of her leaving without a deal rather than making any more concessions to the EU. Just 10% support her pressing ahead with Chequers…
An EU-funded survey found an extraordinary 18-point lead for Remaining in the European union (53%-35%), way out of line with the polling average which shows the country remains more or less equally divided down the middle. What could have caused such an unusual result?
Upon deeper inspection, number boffin Matt Singh found that the Kantar poll had included respondents as young as fifteen years old, as well as others who are not entitled to vote such as non-UK citizens. On top of that it was not weighted to the 2016 vote, nor did it include any turnout modelling. They might as well have asked a “People’s Vote” coffee morning…
After Iran’s ill-fated flirtation with votes at 15 from 2009 to 2011, not one single country in the world has had a franchise that extends that low. Why is the EU suddenly seem desperate to follow Iran’s dubious example…
Whilst Corbynistas grabbed onto a BMG poll that showed a post-conference Labour bounce, it looked like an outlier and the new poll from YouGov suggests it was very much so. This latest YouGov poll will not reflect any movement post the Tory conference. Given the general consensus was that the Tories had a neutral to positive conference we should not expect a downward move. It is a reflection on how badly Corbyn is perceived by voters that 8 years into Tory government the opposition still trails.
It is a reflection on how bad Theresa May is perceived by voters that she still trails don’t know for Prime Minister by 5 percentage points…
YouGov have found that the Tories have opened up a six point lead in the week of Labour Party Conference. YouGov was the first pollster to spot Labour’s poll advance during the 2017 election. They have had the Conservatives in the lead consistently for the last two months. Not that you’d think that given the media narrative…
Field work was done on Monday and Tuesday, so it precedes Corbyn’s speech. Will Jezza move the needle in the next poll?
Guido readers have not embraced the prospect of a new TV debate commission with quite the same enthusiasm as Sky News, despite Sky‘s wall-to-wall attempts to plug the idea. Over 2,500 readers answered Guido’s Twitter poll, with 74% coming out against the idea of a new quango to force party leaders to take part in televised debates in the run up to general elections. A surprisingly firm 3 to 1 ratio. Guido is not opposed to the idea – so long as a commission was funded by the television industry not taxpayer…
BBC fact checkers took Remain fanatic Alastair Campbell to task on BBC Politics Live today. Campbell’s assertion that “there has been a big shift in support for a second referendum” was thoroughly torpedoed by Sir John Curtice’s comprehensive analysis that “there is no consistent evidence of a shift in support for a second referendum.”
Loopy continuity Remainers want to convince the media that their second referendum is viable. It’s not.
Not that you would realise it from watching the mainstream media, Donald Trump has a 46% approval rating accoring to YouGov USA. Macron, the latest idol of centrist pundits, is on 42%. May and Italy’s Conte are on 30%. The former supposed leader of the free world, Angela Merkel, is trailing on 27%.[…] Read the rest “Pollsters, Pollsters of the World, Who’s the Most Popular of All?”
Jean-Claude Juncker on negotiating hard:
“Allow me to tell you a little secret: I didn’t sleep much because of Mrs May last night”.
