Labour leadership

New poll puts Starmer close to historical track to Labour leadership

Posted in Labour, Labour leadership on January 18th, 2020 by Leo – Comments Off on New poll puts Starmer close to historical track to Labour leadership

I recently looked at how the first poll in the Labour leadership contest compared with polls in past leadership elections. I found that polls in previous contests have been extremely stable, with early front runners always maintaining or extending their lead.

But the only poll for this contest taken at the time was done unusually early, more than three months before the ballot. So maybe it wasn’t representative?

Now we have a second poll, this one taken close to the timeframe that polls in past contest have been taken.

The new YouGov poll puts Starmer on 46% to Long-Bailey’s 32% in the first round, winning 63/37 on the final round. The first round lead is 1pt greater than in last month’s poll.

The new poll was done 79 days before the contest finishes. This is getting close to polls in past contests: the initial poll in the most recent Labour leadership was 66 days out, and the first poll in last year’s Tory election was 68 days before the ballot closed.

So it’s still slightly early than previous polls, and it’s still before hustings and TV debates. But it’s starting to look like this contest is following the stable/boring pattern of all past ones that have been polled.

Labour leadership: past member polls bode well for Keir Starmer

Posted in Labour, Labour leadership on January 13th, 2020 by Leo – Comments Off on Labour leadership: past member polls bode well for Keir Starmer

Polling evidence of leadership elections over the last decade suggests party members don’t change their minds much during leadership elections. The candidate who led in the first poll has always won the election:

  • In the 2019 Tory contest, three YouGov polls asked members who they would choose between Johnson and Hunt. They gave Johnson 67%, 74% and 74%. The first poll was done just over two months before the ballot closed.
  • In the 2016 Labour contest, there were two polls that asked about Corbyn and Smith. They gave Corbyn 56% among members in the first poll, and 57% in the second poll. The first poll was done just over two months before the ballot closed.
  • In the 2015 Labour contest, the first poll gave Corbyn 40% among members (a 13pt lead) and 57% among affiliates. The second poll gave him 49% (a 17pt lead) and 55% among the two groups. The first poll done was nearly two months before the ballot closed.
  • In the 2010 Labour contest, the two members polls gave Ed Miliband 38% and 38%, ahead of David on 32% and 31%. The first poll was done nearly two months before the ballot closed.

All of which is to say, Keir Starmer is in a strong position to become the next Labour leader. He’s 13pts up, on 36%, in the first poll.

One reason you could say the historical comparison doesn’t work is that this poll was done just over three months before the ballot closes, so there’s more time for a swing. But in all the contests above, the leader in the first poll extended their lead over the campaign – suggesting the swing seems to favour the front-runner.

Of course: maybe there are more unknown candidates this time so there’s more chance the electorate will like someone they didn’t already know; maybe the trauma of the election loss will unsettle members and shake things up; maybe many new members will join and the polls will have been asking the wrong people ; maybe Momentum and Unite will bring an awesome ground game that turns it around for Long-Bailey.

But Starmer’s rivals are certainly fighting uphill.

Why Corbyn now can’t be beaten until he loses a General Election: Polling Matters

Posted in Labour leadership, Polling Matters, U.S. on September 30th, 2016 by Leo – Comments Off on Why Corbyn now can’t be beaten until he loses a General Election: Polling Matters

On Polling Matters this week I argued that the Labour leadership challenge has made Corbyn far stronger than he was before:

His overall victory wasn’t much bigger than last time, 62% compared with just under 60%. But there was a significant increase in his win among the members, from about 50% to close to 60%. This was partly about people who voted for Burnham last year, but is mostly about a change in the membership. Smith won nearly two-thirds of people who had joined Labour before the last general election, while Corbyn is utterly dominant among more recent members. The party membership has changed and is much more pro-Corbyn – although this had little to do with the leadership challenge.

But the membership challenge itself will also make things even harder for those who want rid of Corbyn, for two reasons:

1. He won 70% of registered supporters, who paid £25 to vote. It has to be expected that Momentum will try to register those people as full party members, which will mean the membership will become even more sympathetic to Corbyn.

2. As I’ve argued before, around a quarter of people who voted Corbyn last year were shakeable in their faith. They would prefer a leader who could win an election to one who they agree with about everything. The size of his victory among members suggests to me that he’s won many if not most of those people (my view in May was, they needed Corbyn to be given longer before they were persuaded he had to go). Having made the decision to vote for Corbyn this time, they’re now pyschologically committed to him and it’s going to be harder to shake their support in future than it would have been if there hadn’t been a challenge.

This and discussion of how Labour can win the public, and the US election, on podcast and video:

A year of Corbyn: how the Labour leader compares with his predecessors

Posted in Historical polls, Labour leadership, Politics on September 11th, 2016 by Leo – 1 Comment

The day Corbyn took over as Labour leader I posted a chart of how his predecessors had done in their first 12 months, so we could compare polling of Labour during Corbyn’s first year. Every three months I’ve checked in on progress (here, here and here).

Corbyn has been in charge of the party for a year and here is the last update in the series (methodological note below).

It shows that Labour is not the most unpopular it’s ever been at the end of a leader’s first year. Fewer people said they’d vote Labour in 2008 than say the same now. Labour has no less support now than it did after Michael Foot’s first year.

You could argue either way about how badly the precedent suggests Corbyn’s doing. On the one hand, every other Labour leader who took over in opposition when it was polling below 40% (Kinnock, Smith, Miliband), finished their first year with it above 40%. Corbyn finishes his first year at around 30%.

On the other hand, Callaghan, Foot and Brown all lost much more support in their first year than Corbyn did. So it’s hard to argue, using just this data, that he’s the most unsuccessful post-war leader.

The comparison also suggests that the leadership challenge (which came between the 9- and 12-month points in this chart) has had little effect on voting intention. Polling of Corbyn’s Labour has followed a common historical pattern: gaining support in its first six months, then losing it in the second six (as did Gaitskell, Wilson, Kinnock, Smith and Blair).

First 12 months

Given where Labour is now, how can it expect to do at the next election?

A rule that has never been broken is that Labour oppositions always lose support between the end of their leader’s first year, and the general election.

read more »

Polling Matters: the doctors’ strike, Trump & can Owen Smith win?

Posted in Labour leadership, Polling Matters, U.S. on September 10th, 2016 by Leo – Comments Off on Polling Matters: the doctors’ strike, Trump & can Owen Smith win?

I was on Polling Matters this week. The topics were:

1) Leo reacts to Don Brind’s analysis on the last show that Owen Smith can still win and looks at Corybn’s impact on the Labour brand
2) Keiran looks at what Ashcroft polling tells us about what voters want from Brexit and what it means for government
3) Katy looks at YouGov polling on potential future Junior Doctors strike
..and then Keiran explains why his trip to America makes him think that Trump could still win.
Podcast version:

And video:

 

Polling Matters: Theresa May and Labour leadership

Posted in Labour leadership, Politics, Polling Matters on July 13th, 2016 by Leo – Comments Off on Polling Matters: Theresa May and Labour leadership

I was on Polling Matters with Keiran and Asa Bennett of the Telegraph, talking about the new PM and the Labour leadership election. For what it’s worth I now think I was probably wrong to say the rule announcement meant the Labour race would be close: they don’t cut out enough people to make much of a difference.

 

Why the eligibility rules for Labour’s election could help Eagle more than Corbyn

Posted in Labour leadership on July 13th, 2016 by Leo – Comments Off on Why the eligibility rules for Labour’s election could help Eagle more than Corbyn

This short post (based on a series of Tweets) was first published on Politicalbetting.com.

Why I think, contrary to the smartest Labour journalists like Stephen Bush, the rules on eligibility for the Labour leadership election help Eagle, not Corbyn:

It’s indisputable that pre-2015 members are much more pro-Eagle (or whoever the anti-Corbyn challenger is) than members who’ve joined since May. Eagle wins easily among older members, as YouGov’s latest poll shows.

Despite that, the poll has Corbyn beating Eagle 50-40 among all members – which is because 46% of the sample were post-2015 joiners (who are much more pro-Corbyn).

If you exclude members who joined 13 Jan onwards – as the rules will – the membership is therefore rebalanced towards people who were members before May 2015. In itself, that helps Eagle.

But maybe those who joined in January to July 2016 are actually more anti-Corbyn, which would mean the rules would help the incumbent.

According to reports, membership rose over that time, particularly with a reported 100,000 increase since 23 June.

Surely this was mostly Corbyn supporters. To dispute that, you’d need to argue that there’s been a surge of opponents of Corbyn joining up January to July, which outnumbers the Momentum people.

Basically, I think, in January to July: Pro-Corbyn joiners > Anti-Corbyn joiners   (you could also put Anti-Corbyn leavers on the first side of the equation although that’s a bit more complicated as they’re not directly affected by the rule change, though many would probably have signed up as supporters).

The other issue is how many the two sides could have recruited if supporters could be signed up. In principle, this could have greatly helped Eagle, but it depended on engaging outsiders.

While it could have been critical, allowing easy access for supporters to sign-up could just have much helped Corbyn. In fact, that seems more likely.

The change in eligibility isn’t as big a difference as a May 2015 cut-off would have been, but overall, it feels like the membership will be quite finely balanced now. Supporters might have been the only lifeline for Eagle if there hadn’t been the eligibility ruling – but with that change, I don’t think they’re essential.

Labour is the most unpopular it’s ever been after nine months of a new leader

Posted in Labour leadership, Politics on June 25th, 2016 by Leo – 7 Comments

26 June update: this has been changed to include today’s Survation poll (Lab:32%), which has slightly improved Labour’s score

Jeremy Corbyn has been leader for nine months so it’s time to update my tracker of his performance compared with that of his predecessors.

After a slight improvement around six months, the proportion supporting Labour has fallen to where it was before Corbyn was elected.

First 12 months - Jun '16 - UPDATE

This means Corbyn’s Labour is now, jointly, the most unpopular the party has ever been after nine months of any post-war new leader. It’s essentially tied with Brown’s Labour, after the financial crisis had hit and he’d bottled the election.

Every previous post-war Labour leader that took over the party in opposition with a voting intention below 45% increased its score by several points and retained most of those gains until at least the end of their first year.

Corbyn, who took over the party with it polling around 31%, its second-lowest for any new leader, has not sustained any improvement in the proportion that would vote Labour. In mid-March Labour had four consecutive polls between 34-36%, but that slight boost has since disappeared.

That is despite the government being split on Europe, u-turning on major decisions and having had a senior cabinet minister resign in protest against its policies.

In comparison with other Labour opposition leaders, Corbyn’s Labour is 7pts behind where the next lowest, Kinnock, was after nine months, when Labour was still 13 years away from winning a general election. It is 10pts behind where Miliband’s Labour was at the same point, when the party had just been kicked out after 13 years in power.

Compared with the election-winning leaders, Labour is now 18pts behind Wilson and 24pts behind Blair.

read more »

Corbyn’s chances of staying leader are better than ever – for now

Posted in Labour leadership, Politics on May 19th, 2016 by Leo – Comments Off on Corbyn’s chances of staying leader are better than ever – for now

A few months ago I argued that Corbyn’s leadership wasn’t as secure as it seemed. Although he had won a comfortable majority and most Labour members said he was doing well, I thought that around a quarter of his voters might doubt his electability and be prepared to switch to a rival. That could be enough for him to be turfed out in a leadership content.

Now, a fresh YouGov/Times poll of Labour members has forced me to change my mind.

According to my theory, a chunk of Corbyn voters should have looked at his recent performance and started signalling their willingness to back an alternative.

This hasn’t happened.

If anything, we see the opposite. A larger proportion of Labour members now say they think Corbyn’s doing well than said the same in November (72% to 66%). Among those who voted for him last year, only 16% think he should be ousted before the next general election.

This has sunk my theory that Corbyn could be overthrown soon. Since the November poll, we’ve seen Corbyn’s weak response to the Budget, his Shadow Chancellor waving around the Little Red Book, the leaking of the naughty/nice list of MPs, revelations about members’ anti-Semitism, and his opposition losing seats in the local elections. Yet, Labour members have seen all this and become more confident in their leader.

If these mini-crises haven’t disillusioned Corbyn’s voters, it’s hard to imagine what, realistically, could do so in the next two years. Corbyn has just survived the biggest electoral test he will face until, arguably, the European elections in 2019 (if we have them).

But that still doesn’t mean he’s sure to be leader in the next election.

We fight em till we can't

Strong though this poll is for Corbyn, it also shows what could be his undoing. Only half of Labour members think the party is on course to win the next election. A quarter of Corbyn’s voters think it’s heading towards defeat. While there’s no sign they think the party would do better under an alternative, those are dangerous numbers for Corbyn.

read more »

Labour polls six months after Corbyn became leader

Posted in Labour leadership, Politics on March 11th, 2016 by Leo – Comments Off on Labour polls six months after Corbyn became leader

I’ve been tracking Labour’s poll rating under Corbyn and comparing it with how the party did in the first few months of previous leaders.

In the first entry I said that every leader who started below 40% immediately increased Labour’s vote share by at least 5pts.

At three months I found that Labour’s score then was the lowest after three months of any modern leader.

Today’s the end of his first six months and here’s the next update. Labour’s poll score hasn’t fallen any further but is still the lowest at this point under any modern leader:

First 12 months - March '16

Note on methodology: As I said last time, the three-month numbers now include the two weeks after 12 December as well as the two weeks before then (to be consistent with the comparisons), so it has increased by 0.8 from the previous version. The six-month number might similarly change when I do the nine-month update. All data is from Mark Pack’s spreadsheet or UK Polling Report.