Posted on 04/24/2005 3:19:28 PM PDT by LdSentinal
London - With 11 days left until the British general elections, a pair of fresh opinion polls Sunday showed Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party still in the lead, and voters largely bored.
A YouGov poll in the Sunday Times put Labour at 37%, compared with 33% for the main opposition Conservatives led by Michael Howard and 23% for the Liberal Democrats led by Charles Kennedy.
An ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph saw Labour at 39%, six points ahead of the Tories, with the Lib Dems at 21%, as campaigning for the May 5 election heats up.
Asked who'd make a better prime minister, 39% of respondents to the ICM/Sunday Telegraph poll picked Blair, who has seeking a third straight term in office, while 24% went for Howard and 19% for Kennedy.
Three weeks into the campaign, however, it looked as if British voters were largely immune to election fever.
Seventy-two percent in the YouGov/Sunday Times poll thought the politicians were "sticking to the same old script", and only 17% felt they were "engaging with the issues that matter".
Bored
A separate YouGov poll, this time for Sky News, indicated that 63% of voters thought the campaign has been boring, and that 34% found it interesting.
Issues uppermost in voters' minds remained the same: health (21%), taxes (15%), the economy (14%), and crime and education (both at 13%).
Immigration and the war against terrorism trailed at nine percent and four percent respectively, followed by Britain's relationship with Europe at four percent and Iraq at three percent.
The YouGov/Sunday Times poll was conducted by internet among 1 490 respondents between Thursday and Saturday, while the ICM/Sunday Telegraph poll involved 1 524 voters contacted by telephone last Wednesday through Friday
No indication yet on what -- if any -- the effect the BBC shilling for Labour will have on the polls.
"No indication yet on what -- if any -- the effect the BBC shilling for Labour will have on the polls."
None whatsoever. Aside from the fact that it's complete media froth, no-one from any of the parties was involved.
These polls are a huge indictment of Michael Howard. We're talking about a government that is widely despised by the electorate who are looking for a reasonable alternative to vote for.
And what do they get? A party with nothing to say other than they will do the same as Labour on public spending, throw in a few superficial tax cuts funded by some mythical 'cutting of beuracratic waste' (copyright, every government ever, delivered by none). And then spend the next fortnight talking about immigration and convincing the floating voter that they are a single issue party ripping off policies from the BNP. The average voter doesn't even have much idea what the policies are (probably for the best as they're pretty incoherent) as most of the time has been taken up peddling the "we're not racist" justification.
New ideas, coherent plan for moving the country forward, alternative blueprint to Labour's formula of regulation and stealth taxes? Nope.
"Surely that doesn't matter. Just goes to prove that the BBC has a horrible bias towards the left."
I've already done that in another thread, so I won't rehash it. Whether it proves that or not wasn't the question, the question was whether it will have an effect on the electorate's voting intentions. And the answer is no.
I wouldn't pay much attention to these. Huge disparities in figures and no report of the MOE.
Excellent news, OWT! Thanks for the heads up!
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