Though Cowards Flinch

There’s a wonderful episode in Season 4 of the West Wing where Josh is trying to come to grips with some polling on foreign aid. Sixty-four percent of people think that the US foreign aid budget is too high, and fifty-five think it should be cut. Josh’s problem is with the nine percent who think that foreign aid is too high but shouldn’t be cut. He regards this as an inconsistency born of stupidity.

Looking at the YouGov figures reported by Tom Harris, I’m reminded of that situation. A whopping seventy-two percent support the new 45% tax band and sixty percent support the VAT reduction. The figures get even better when you look at some other measures in the poll run by the Daily Telegraph: 81% in favour of the budgetary announcements concerning pensioners for example.

All across the board, Cameron seems to be failing: Gordon’s approvals are still in the tank, but “Labour under Gordon” are now within an electoral whisker of “Tories under Cameron”. Asked who they would prefer to see after the next election, Brown or Cameron, 44% chose Cameron and 41% chose Brown. This reflects the general trend of 40% Con and 36% Lab electoral arrangement.

Is it possible, then, that Gordon Brown might pull a Harold Wilson 1966 out of the bag?

It’s possible, sure. I’m not too discouraged by the 59% who disapprove of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. At least some element of that is left-wing and, when left alone in their voting booth, will still vote for Labour. On the other hand, in every way imaginable, Brown is not too far from Cameron on the key benchmarks: 2% deficit on best Prime Minister, 2% deficit on most trusted Party.

All in all, I’m quite tempted to put this dramatic reversal in Labour fortunes, coming back from a 23-point deficit to a 4-point gap, down to the more radical tone the government has adopted. I’m not convinced by it; most other socialists aren’t convinced by it – and the media have got hold of the stories that a VAT rise was planned up until a week or so ago. Even still, a little redistribution is better than none.

However, 39% still think the government is handling the crisis badly and 50% think that the government is sacrificing tomorrow’s economy by borrowing so large. One wonders what the connection between these figures and the 65% who think the borrowing won’t help the economy or the 77% who think the measures won’t help their families much or at all.

Similarly, with such negative figures on how well we’re weathering the economic storm, one wonders why if few enough people think they’ll benefit or the economy will get better, they support the 45% tax band or the VAT decrease. Could it be that actually, even predating this crisis, a fairly large slice of public opinion was in favour of increased wealth redistribution regardless of other factors?

In each of the key figures Gordon Brown performs woefully…until he’s put up against his real competitors, at which point Labour’s prospective performance increases dramatically. Despite being disliked by 58% and with 54% thinking he’s hamming up the economy, an increasing number are evidently thinking that Brown is a better choice than his opponents – and so the gap between Labour and Tories narrows.

At the root of it these figures are virtually unintelligible without knowing what the correlation between each figure is in terms of who voted for what, i.e. how the votes in each one overlap with the votes in every other one. At least some percentage think either that shops won’t pass on VAT reductions or they have no earthly idea what VAT is, consequently not realising a drop might reduce their shopping bill.

Similarly, either some percentage think that the new tax rate is going to get swallowed up by having to nationalise more industries or pay down debt or they think that extra investment in public services is not a good thing. This is from the percentage who agree with the 45% tax rate but don’t think it will benefit them. And if there’s any overlap at all, some of them don’t think it will benefit the economy either.

This is why we shouldn’t trust market research polling. Newspapers print without any reference to these issues figures from polling to suit their editorial byline. It’s very evident in the Telegraph article for which this YouGov poll was created – and even then, some of their figures are misquoted. Instead of choosing such a cheap, easy story, the newspapers might actually look at the records of each Party.

I know that local government doesn’t exactly make for the most interesting arena – but the ignorance and performances displayed there are what each political party is really about. Labour can be remarkably corrupt in local government, and we should be told about it – but by and large I think that an enormous number would accept the trade off, of Labour’s antics versus Lib-Dem two-facedness or Tory backslapping with national enterprises set up solely for the purpose of leeching off the public sector.

Similarly, a poll is based on news reports and if the news reports are simply based on the polling with a few quotes added for good measure, where’s the news gone? Where have the actual events such as pensioners getting extra money, or the rich getting stroppy, gone? The media likes to report the Baby Ps of every issue, but not the other 25 letters who get looked after – and I’m speaking in metaphor, not specifically about childcare which is never quite so simple as that.

This is a problem but it’s not going to be sorted by running polls – either for the media or for politicians.