Like our politicians, the public has been considering the vexed issue of control orders. When should civil liberties be curtailed for the sake of national security? Is there in fact a trade-off between the two? When, if ever, should someone’s freedom be curtailed without charging them or bringing them within ...
Read more...
Two polls over the weekend show Labour 17 points ahead of the Liberal Democrats in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election. So is Labour’s Debbie Abraham a shoo-in, and Nick Clegg heading for a bloody nose, as much of the commentariat seem to think? I am not so sure. I ...
Read more...
Ahead of last week’s by-election I predicted that the gap between Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election would be narrower than the 17-point Labour lead reported by two opinion polls conducted a week before polling day. I argued that the history of by-elections in ...
Read more...
For the past three weeks, Labour has sustained an average lead over the Conservatives of five percentage points. Results from individual polls inevitably fluctuate; but the Conservatives have not been ahead in any of the 23 polls that YouGov has conducted since mid-December. On the face of it, Ed Miliband ...
Read more...
A few days after the news came that Britain’s economy had contracted by 0.5% in the final quarter of 2010 came the figures from GfK’s monthly survey of consumer confidence, showing an unusually large fall. The two were obviously connected, weren’t they? Not really. GfK’s fieldwork lasts most of the ...
Read more...
Two weeks ago I suggested that Labour should be doing better than hold a mere five-point lead over the Conservatives. No sooner had I written this than the lead started to grow. In YouGov’s latest survey for the Sunday Times, it stands at 10 points, with Labour at a record ...
Read more...
The first survey conducted in Egypt since the fall of President Mubarak shows that a truly political revolution is under way. That is, the main priority of most Egyptians is freedom and democracy: they believe economic and social reforms can wait. The online survey of 1,871 Egyptians was conducted last ...
Read more...
Should Britain have diplomatic relations with tyrants in the Middle East? Should we buy their oil? Should we sell them arms? On the whole, Britain’s public takes a pragmatic view. At the end of a week in which a number of Libyan towns fell to opponents of the Gaddafi regime ...
Read more...
What does the Barnsley Central defeat mean for Nick Clegg? Peter Kellner considers our figures and explains On their own, by-elections mean little. Judged in isolation, the Lib Dems’ embarrassing sixth place in Barnsley Central last Thursday can be dismissed as easily as their creditable second place in Oldham East ...
Read more...
In recent weeks three different pollsters have detected a clear pattern. New YouGov research explains it. The pattern is this. Voters are more likely to back the Alternative Vote when they are asked, cold, which side they are on, and to favour First Past The Post when they are warmed ...
Read more...
