Polls apart: has Labour had its day in Glasgow East?

by mchawk | July 20, 2008 at 05:02 am | 181 views | 2 comments

The Glasgow East byelection has been dogged with problems for the Labour Party. They've had problems securing a candidate, after their original choice pulled out of the race hours before the selection process, for 'family reasons.' Then came the resignation of the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, over financial irregularities of the funding of her leadership campaign. And now pollsters are disagreeing over who will win.

Glasgow East has always been considered a 'safe seat' for Labour, but that safety is now under threat, as the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) are proving to be more popular than the Westminster alternatives.

With Labour's recent drubbing in the Henley byelection (where they came fifth, behind the Greens and British National party), every byelection is now being seen as a litmus test for Gordon Brown's premiership. On Thursday (July 24th) will Brown's countrymen be rejecting him as harshly as the sassenach English?

That all depends on who you ask.

Recent polls show conflicting results - Labour will either storm the byelection or be beaten in a landslide.

The most recent UK-wide ICM poll for the Guardian put Labour 20 points behind the Tories.

So that's bad news for Labour - good news for the Tories.

Progressive Scottish Opinion have produced a second poll for the Glasgow East by-election... It shows a substantial Labour lead with voting intentions of LAB 52%, SNP 35%, CON 7%, LDEM 3%. The poll was conducted between the 14th and 17th July, and interviewed 509 people.

Good news for Labour - terrible news for the Tories.

Gordon Brown today faced a further setback ahead of the Glasgow East byelection as a poll revealed that the Scottish National party had opened up a four-point lead over Labour in Scotland.

A YouGov survey for the Daily Telegraph showed the SNP running at 33% to Labour's 29%, with the Tories on 20%, and the Lib Dems on 14%.

The SNP, this time? Come on pollsters - get your act together! Tell us who's going to win.

Quite obviously, polling results are all determined by who you ask. With voter turnout at an all-time low in the UK, the only people who are actually voting on election days are those who are politically active - the real election results are the voice of a motivated minority. If these polls are sampling 'the general public' then the chances are that they'll be way off the mark, as so few of them can be bothered to vote.

So, what if you put the same poll to political bloggers?

Labour will lose the Glasgow East by-election, according to a majority of ePolitix.com subscribers.

A survey conducted this week showed that 51.9 per cent of respondents believe that the SNP will win next Thursday's poll.

In contrast just 42.6 per cent felt that Labour will defend the seat it won with a majority of more than 13,000 as recently as 2005.

The online survey of 506 ePolitix.com readers was conducted from 16-17 July 2008.

So the SNP will win the day?

The last word on that will be had by the electorate on Thursday.

Newsnight Scotland examines the Glasgow East constituency

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gerrypopplestone

at 06:31 on July 20th, 2008

good stuff:

mchawk, I like this story. It's really interesting. The Economist this week reckons that Labour will probably do OK, but the mag is pretty scathing about the SNP.