by
Duncan Bruce (@duncanqbruce)
Recently Labour has been celebrating some good polling results with all the pollsters agreeing that Labour is ahead, but disagreeing as to what degree. YouGov is an entirely 'online' pollster, meaning it draws its data only from its online users rather than telephone canvassing. On the face of it that sounds like a method that would not produce an accurate result but YouGov weights its data in order of sex, age, region to gain an accurate reflection of the country's voting intention, and indeed recently YouGov was the closest pollster on the 2012 London Mayoral Election and the 2012 Local Elections.
So what is YouGov saying the country's voting intention is? Well the headline figure for Labour is very good - Labour leads by 14-points on 45% with the Tories on 31%. The Liberal Democrats have collapsed from their 27% in 2010 to 9% and UKIP is now on 9%.
Labour's biggest lead is in the 18-24 year old age group where Labour has a 35-point lead over the Tories. The Tories will take a gamble with this age group (as they have previously) and presume it won't vote, I personally think that's a mistake. Young people are feeling more and more irrelevant under the coalition with no effort being made to bring down youth unemployment and young people feeling like they are saddled with debt on leaving university. The Tories' biggest problem (in their eyes) will be the 25-39 and the more important 40-59 age groups, groups that repeatedly vote in general elections. In both these age groups Labour has 50% of the vote with the Tories fighting with the Liberal Democrats, UKIP, the Green Party, Plaid and the SNP for the remaining portion of the vote. In the Tories' safest age group, 60+, they continue to win, however they've dropped from their position of over 50% of the vote with UKIP now making massive gains in this demographic.
Obviously with all polling there is a margin or error, however with a 14-point lead regardless of that margin, Labour would form the next government.
Results if the election were conducted tomorrow:
On the current boundaries:
Labour: 390 seats (+132) - Reading West would be a Labour gain, Reading East most likely a Labour gain.
Conservative: 214 (-92)
Liberal Democrats: 21 (-36)
Others: 7 (-4)
Labour majority of 130 seats
On the revised boundaries:
Labour: 365 seats (+107) - Reading West would be a Labour gain, Reading East most likely a Labour gain.
Conservative: 200 (-105)
Liberal Democrats: 12 (-45)
Others: 7 (-4)
Labour majority of 130 seats
Neither of the Reading parliamentary seats are affected by boundary changes so in both projections they are the same.
The latest YouGov poll also indicated that 61% of people asked disapproved of the government's record to date, with only 23% approving. Labour is also seen as leading on the NHS, education and schools, taxation, unemployment and the economy. The Conservatives are seen as leading on Europe, asylum and immigration, and law and order. Neither David Cameron or Ed Miliband came out of the YouGov poll looking fantastic but in the key question "in touch with the concerns of ordinary people" Ed Miliband scored 23% whereas David Cameron scored a disastrous 5% - that's right, out of every 100 people asked, only 5 would say that David Cameron is in touch with the concerns of ordinary people.
Link to the YouGov data
Seat projections were compiled using
UK Polling Report's Seat Calculator
Graphics are courtesy of the BBC.
This year Reading Labour set the target of recruiting 50 new members and as of last night we've achieved that goal (undoubtedly with a little help from Ed Miliband and his 'One Nation' speech). What is also amazing news is the fact that almost 20 of the new members are Reading Young Labour members. The rise of young people in Reading Labour has been rather extraordinary and our numbers have increased from around 40 in 2010 to over 150 in 2012. This year our delegate to Labour Party conference was chosen out of over a thousand to sit on stage with Ed Miliband, partially due to the success we've had here locally in the elections and in our membership recruitment.
