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Independent on Sunday Poll

Independent on Sunday Poll 4 October 2009

Date Published: 03 Oct 2009

Categories: Energy | Media | Politics | Public and communities | Technology & Telecoms | UK

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Independent on Sunday Poll 4 October 2009

 
ComRes poll for The Independent on Sunday 
 
Con       40% (+2)
Lab        28% (+5)
LD         19% (-4)
Others   13% (-3)
 
(Change since ComRes for The Independent published 28 September - previous Independent on Sunday, 23 Aug, Con 41%, Lab 24%, LD 18%, Others 16%)

Additional questions:
 
On the economic questions, the overall sense is that a lot of people are ready to give Gordon Brown the credit for rescuing Britain from recession, but they’re unconvinced that David Cameron would have made such a worse job of it – as Labour claims.
 
Gordon Brown took the right decisions to prevent the recession turning into a slump

Agree            50%
Disagree        44%

  • 37% of Tory voters agree as do 60% of Lib Dems.
 
The recession would have been worse if David Cameron had been prime minister

Agree               32%
Disagree           55%
  • Importantly for the Tories, a majority of all types of voter except Labour supporters disagree with this (65% of Labour voters agree) – while a substantial proportion of people who are undecided or refuse to say how they would vote don’t know
  I don’t really know what David Cameron stands for

                        Now          July 2009     July 2008
Agree               49%          53%            49%
Disagree           47%          42%            42%

  • David Cameron has made precisely no headway on this measure in the past 15 months
  • C2s and DEs are the groups most likely to agree, as are (unsurprisingly) Labour voters
  • Worryingly for the Tories, most of those who refuse to say how they would vote, or don’t know, agree with this statement (54%) – although we should probably add to these the 11% who answered ‘don’t know’!
  • The figure which ought to be most worrying of all for the Tories is that 32% of their own voters don’t know what their party leader stands for: which confirms the claim that the Tories have not ‘sealed the deal’ with voters.

Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, would be a better prime minister than Gordon Brown

                        Now       May
Agree               26%      32%
Disagree           58%      49%

  • Alan Johnson’s currency is clearly on the wane:  the net disagreement figure in May was -17%, whereas now it is almost twice that at -32%.
  • Encouragingly for Gordon Brown (I’ve not been able to say that for a long time!), fewer than one in ten Labour voters (8%) agree
  • However, more than twice this proportion of 2005’s Labour supporters (19%) agree, suggesting that Labour could recoup some of their core voters if they switched leader (of course they may lose some too)
 
Andrew Hawkins's analysis of voting intention:
 
  • Part of Labour’s problem is that ABs are a lot more likely to vote than social groups that ought to be core Labour supporters.  56% of ABs are ‘absolutely certain’ to vote compared to 38% of C2s and 44% of DEs.  A whopping 28% of C2s are ‘certain not to vote’.  Labour’s strategy of targeting the middle classes is plain wrong – they need to regain their own core supporters first.
  • The Tories are struggling regionally and are marginally behind Labour in northern England
  • 12% of 2005 Labour voters and 13% of 2005 Lib Dem voters have switched to the Tories

Methodology note:
 
ComRes telephoned 1022 GB adults between 30th September and 1st October 2009.  Data were weighted by past vote recall.

 

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