Tuesday, June 24, 2003

One of the good things about ICM's polls for The Guardian is that they put a breakdown of the results online (it's in Excel format). The 'headline' voting intention figures (Labour 38%, Conservatives 34%, Lib Dems 21%, Others 7%) continue the trend of all the recent polls with Labour in the high thirties, the Tories in the mid-to-low thirties, Lib Dems in the low twenties and others in the mid-to-high single digits. Labour have lost support from the last election, but it's mostly gone to the Lib Dems and others, with the Tories not making any significant gains.

However, some of the other questions they asked add some depth to those figures. Firstly, they asked 'are you satisfied or unsatisfied with the job Blair/Smith/Kennedy are doing as leader of their party?':
    Kennedy is the only leader with an overall positive score - +18% to Blair's -13 and IDS' -20%
    Blair still has the overwhelming support of Labour voters - +51% - but IDS gets a slight negative (-2%) from Conservative voters while Kennedy has a positive rating from supporters of all three parties
    Broken down by region (North/Midlands/South - no indication of where the borders are, or if they include Wales and Scotland)), Blair and IDS do best in the North, but both still have negative numbers (Blair -1%, IDS -13%) while Kennedy does best in the south - his +23% there is the exact opposite of IDS' -23%. Given the number of Tory/Lib Dem marginals in the South, those will be worrying numbers for the Tories
    Interestingly, broken down by age, all three leaders get their best results among 18-24 year olds, which raises interesting questions about whether young people really do distrust politicians

On other questions, Blair gets negative scores for his handling of 'European and international affairs' (-15%) and 'domestic UK issues like health, education and law and order' (-27%) while the replacement of the Lord Chancellor with the Department of Constitutional Affairs elicits a big shrug of the shoulders and a 'dunno, guv' response (17% in favour, 18% against, 65% no opinion)

Finally, the poll also included the question 'From everything you have seen and heard, do you think the military attack on Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein was justified or unjustified?'. Overall, 48% thought it was justified, 40% unjustified:
    By age, those between 18 and 24 thought it was unjustified (37%-53%) - 25-34 year olds (51%-39%), 35-64 year olds (51%-37%) and those 65 and over (44%-43%) thought it was justified.
    By social group, ABs thought it was unjustified, C1s C2s and DEs thought it was justified
    Only a majority of Labour voters (61%-31%) thought it was justified, with Tories (44%-47%), Lib Dems (38%-58%) and others (47%-50%) thinking it was unjustified
    By region, the North (51%-36%) and the Midlands (52%-40%) thought it was justified, but a narrow majority in the South (43%-45%) thought it was unjustified

Finally, looking at the breakdown of respondents by age/sex/region etc there are some interesting discoveries to be made:
    It appears that the average Tory voter is older than the average Labour or Lib Dem voter (the Tories actually come 3rd for support amongst 18-24 year olds, but it's a very small sample when broken down to that age group only). However, the median Tory voter comes in the 45-54 year old age group, while the median Labour and Lib Dem voter is in the 35-44 year old group.
    By sex, Labour's support divides 50-50, while both the Tories (53-47) and Lib Dems (54-46) have a majority of female voters (others are overwhelmingly supported by male voters - 66-34)
    Labour voters are the least likely to have taken a foreign holiday in the last three years - 59%, compared to 61% of Tories and 64% of Lib Dems
    Conservative voters are the least likely to have internet access - 41% have no access, compared to 37% of Labour voters, 35% of Lib Dems and 32% of others

Anyway, hope that was of interest to people. Unfortunately, it didn't have the one breakdown I really wanted - how the 'others' section breaks down. There's been growth in the people saying they'd vote for 'others', but I'm interested in seeing if this just a general trend towards the minor parties, or if it reflects dynamic growth for one or two of them. If anyone's seen any figures covering this recently, please let me know as I'd especially like to see what share of the vote the Greens, UKIP, SSP and BNP are getting.

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