Labour heading for victory - polls

[seriousstan]

Labour is heading for a third General Election victory, according to a clutch of recently-published polls.

But the projected margin of Tony Blair's victory varied as pollsters put his lead over the Tories at anywhere between one and 10%.

According to a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times, Michael Howard has narrowed the gap to just a single point, with Labour on 36%, the Tories on 35% and the Liberal Democrats on 23%.

If repeated on May 5, this would give Tony Blair a majority of nearly 60 seats.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050416/344/fghn8.html

[Mojambo]

1. Man! What does Blair have to do to lose his job?

Not that Howard would be better...

[rodeodance]

2. have bushs puppets?

[D-Notice]

3. The only thing that's

making people vote for Labour is the (current) state of the UK economy - without Gordon Brown Bliar'd be fucked!

Here's hoping for tactical voting (of which I'll be involved)... there's also the effect of postal votes which have been proved to have been rigged by Labour (only the Birmingham branch - not the overall UK branch... yet)

[mmmbeer]

5. Also Tory bigotry-

The Tories have aimed to motivate their base with rants against Gypsies and immigrants- what they didn't count on was that these rants would motivate the Labour base even more, as they've realised that much as Blair sucks, Howard is even worse!

And then of course there's Howards attempts to play personality politics- why the fuck would the only person on the country less likeable than Blair try such a thing? Seriously, Mikey boy, no one gives a shit about how attractive your wife is. Except perhaps that leering perv Andrew Neil.

[T_i_B]

9. As Blair has a landslide majority...

...he has to do quite a lot to get kicked out.

[nine30]

31. Remember Tony is a liberal...

..he may have supported the idiot in the war, but thats about the only mistake he has made. He and Clinton were great pals and they agreed on most issues. Au contraire, he is often at odds with the moron , including the time when he asked Blair to kneel with him and pray(!!)

Blair may even privately have been opposed to the war, hard to tell, but he didn't want to create a rift with the US. Truth is he had to get along with us (meaning our fascist govt) for a number of years.

Blair is also a well and spoken smart man. The difference is painfully obvious when they give joint press conferences.

[CJCRANE]

49. I would say that

Blair and some of his cabinet members are centre-right, that's balanced out by Gordon Brown and the rest of the party which are centre-left. That's why the party as a whole is electable.

The Tories are too right-wing and the LibDems to left-wing for populist appeal.

[Zhade]

67. Blair's a liberal the way I'm the new pope.

He's a crony corporatist war criminal, not a frigging liberal.

[leveymg]

4. Does the UK have electronic or paper ballots?

We know which way it'll go, if it's the former.


:evilgrin: :freak: :argh: :bounce:

[mmmbeer]

6. paper- but postal voting leaves much room for corruption.

Several Labour councillors have been found guilty of rigging the process already. But if there's corruption to be had, I usually work on the assumption that the Tories are shin deep in it as well.

[T_i_B]

10. Oh yes...

All the main parties are enouraging people to do postal votes and to return their votes to the parties rather then the returning officers. Postal voting truly does stink.

[aaronnyc]

62. Right, because nobody has ever stolen an election using paper ballots?

Prior to the 1960's, just about every election in the South (and many in the Northern cities) have documented electoral fraud. These were all done with paper ballots.

[w4rma]

7. Vote LibDem, not Labor while Blair is in charge. Target Labourites who

voted for Blair with the Tories.

[lovuian]

8. England has the voting fraud going on there too!!!

No way Blair has the majority!!!

[AP]

11. RW Spin. 1% is close, but they make it sound like Tony's going to win so

that people don't vote.

This is a Dewey defeats Truman headline, and if you don't want the Tories to win you better get out there and vote. Don't let headlines like this make you feel like you don't have to be vigilant and vote.

[Freddie Stubbs]

12. Wouldn't the right wing want the Torries to win?

:shrug:

[AP]

13. Exactly. Why can't people see what's going on?

Saying that Labour has it in the bag when they're only up by 1% is a vote suppression tactic that gives Tories a chance to win th election.

Doesn't anyone watch The Simpsons? "One vote for Martin. Two votes for Martin."

[INDIA]

14. What is going on?!?!?!

First Australia, then the U.S., now Britain; all of the instigators of this war are getting re-elected? Where's Jimmy Carter, I smell fraud!!!

[AP]

15. The Tories want to win the election so they can make their people rich.

They're within 1% in the polls and the press is trying to dissuade people from caring.

The world is going to be a much better place if Labour stays in power and people like Bush and Berlusconi lose elections, regardless of who "supported" the war (and the issue of support is not as black and white as you might think -- I don't think that Rumsfield was happy that the UK decided to participate).

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

37. "I smell fraud!!!"

Unlike the recent US election, these countries have actually been able to discuss issues other than the war.

[muriel_volestrangler]

36. Your reply is just pro-Blair spin

Note how you've ignored the polls that say Labour has a lead of 10% or 6%, and started claiming that the lead is just the 1%. And you seem to be ignoring that the lead of 1% would still give Labour a majority of 60 seats anyway.

The vigilance required is to get Blair chucked out as leader as soon as possible. As a Brit, I want my government to take control of its own foreign policy again (the Foreign Secretary actually admitted that the British government wanted to give Blix's inspectors longer, but they caved in to 'international consensus' to go to war - ie to Bush).

[AP]

43. Guilty as charged of wanting Tories not to win.

I stand by my view that this is a Tory/media strategy to keep turnout low (by, for example, telling people that a Labour victory is a sure thing when it isn't) so that Tories have a chance.

The headline for that article is that Labour has it in the bag, then the text says that one poll shows him winning by the huge sum of 1%. That's not a significant lead.

Anyone who would rather have a Tory than Blair win either has no memory of British history pre-1997, or is a covert right winger, IMO.

[muriel_volestrangler]

45. but a 1% lead for Labour means a 60 seat majority

and the 6 or 10% leads mean much bigger majorities. Come on, AP, talk about the whole picture, for once. If you don't, your spin for Blair will be unconvincing on DU.

[AP]

46. If Labour were ahead by only 1% in every district, and they lose that...

...then the Tories would win EVERY district.

[muriel_volestrangler]

50. But that isn't the case

of course they're not ahead by 1% in every seat. There are large variations, depending on the seat being urban/rural, English/non-English, north/south etc.

It's fairly silly to take one statistic from a real situation (one of the 3 polls), and then misapply it to an unreal situation. Try looking at one of the websites that applies the overall results of a nationwide poll to the distribution of seats, such as this one from th4e BBC.

[AP]

57. They're only ahead 1% nationally according to that poll (IIUC).

so they're slightly behind in some, slightly ahead in others, leading by wide margins in others and losing by wide margins in others.

And making voters feel like it's in the bag for Labour is a great way to help Tories win a few close ones.

One vote for Martin. Two votes for Martin. Martin wins.

[tx_dem41]

60. Are you familiar with the polling in the UK and how that's regularly..

..and fairly accurately applied to the resulting seat apportioning? If not, you need to do some reading. It's fairly well perceived that for the Tories to win (i.e. have the majority of seats), they need about a 5-7% lead in the national poll.

[AP]

65. I'm just not comfortable with Labour's margin right now. You can scold...

me all you want for not understanding British polling if on the day after the election Tories haven't gained power.

However, if they have, you can come back and apologize to me for not being sufficiently vigilant.

In the meantime, I believe that vigilance and encouraging people to vote so that Tories don't win is the best thing.

[tx_dem41]

66. We agree on that.

And, sorry for "scolding". It was wrong of me to do so.

[Moderator]

16. kick to combine

[ECH1969]

17. Blair heads for a third landslide with 10-point lead

Labour has widened its lead over the Conservatives to 10 points and is heading for a third successive landslide general election win on May 5 with a majority of more than 150, an ICM opinion poll for The Telegraph reveals today.

The survey shows that Labour has surged ahead in the past week of campaigning, since Gordon Brown returned to the front line and the party made the handling of the economy the centrepiece of its campaign. ICM puts Labour on 40 per cent, up two points from last Sunday, with the Conservatives down four per cent on 30 and the Liberal Democrats up two on 22 per cent.

If repeated on polling day, with a uniform swing across the country, Labour would have a majority of 158, only seven fewer than its 2001 victory. The poll - which shows that the gap between the two main parties is the widest since the capture of Baghdad in the Iraq War two years ago - is a bitter blow for Michael Howard, the Conservative Party leader.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/17/npoll17.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/04/17/ixnewstop.html

[Cha]

18. Yeah, too bad there was no who

beat out blair in the primaries. Maybe someone with a conscience.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

29. Britain doesn't have primaries

A sitting MP goes to his local constituency party before the General Election, where the party members usually re-nominate them. If the MP fails to get the endorsement, (which is very rare) then others can stand in the constituency to get the political party's nomination.

[DaveinMD]

32. don't they elect

party leader a convention. That's where the challenge to Blair would take place.

[GalleryGod]

19. Oh,Joy

:sarcasm: :argh:

[tuvor]

20. Time for the Daily Mirror to look at itself in the...well, mirror.

[rodeodance]

21. well Jr might be a bit jealous if Blair gets 10 pts!!!

[D-Notice]

52. Ain't gonna happen...

The Mirror are supporting Labour

[Kingofalldems]

22. Isn't one of the campaign isues

the scrapping of the Tories disastrous British SS privatization in favor of THE CURRENT American system? How ironic.

[Itsthetruth]

24. Vote For The Lesser Evil?

Lesser evilism at work in Great Britain.

I bet some labour party liberals are making the argument that Blair isn't as bad as the Conservative Party candidate!

Anybody But Howard!

[Festivito]

23. Like a bad hoax, chosing between Blair and a CONservative!

Like being caught between Iraq an' a canard place.

[Fenris]

25. Not a plus, not a negative

I am sorry that Blair continues to head Labour and the British government, but I am pleased to see that he beat the race-baiting Howard.

[leQ]

26. what voting machines do they use over there?

there's just no other logical explanation as to why these liars are still pulling these kind of numbers. is there?

[Anarcho-Socialist]

28. They don't use voting machines

Paper ballots.

Blair is a lying weasel, but most consider him preferable to Howard. People who are voting Labour are more endorsing Gordon Brown (who has more control over the U.K. economy) rather than Blair.

[Nihil]

38. Wanna bet?

The major method is still paper votes but over the last few elections
there have been several "pilot" regions that have tested "alternatives":
a) Postal voting only - fraud currently under police investigation
b) Electronic touch screen voting - manufactured by De La Rue (related
to one of your own favourite cheats, sorry, election fixing companies)
c) SMS voting - don't laugh, they've tried it!

I was in a touch screen region last time ... no paper, no audit trail ...
sounds familiar?

Blair is only "popular" in as much as the alternatives are more unpopular.

[muriel_volestrangler]

39. But I don't think they're using SMS, touch screens etc. for this election

because it was postal voting that got them the desired increase in voting rates - and they ignore the inherent vulnerabilities in it.

[woosh]

27. Now that is a mandate.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

30. People are voting against the Conservatives, rather than endorsing Blair

because if Blair lost to the Conservatives, it would be a lot worse.

Blair is a liar, but people still like the Labour Party and are voting for the party rather than for Blair. The Conservatives are the kindred spirit of the GOP in most respects, whilst the Labour Party are to the left of the Democratic Party on social/equality issues and are to the left of the U.S. Green Party on economic issues. But for reasons that no one can quite understand, Blair's foreign policy is to the right.

Blair is likely to step-aside in 2-3 years in favour of Gordon Brown, who is more widely-respected.

The Liberal Democrats who are the 3rd party have no realistic chance of gaining power. It would take a huge 30% swing from both Tories and Labour.

[leesa]

33. Can they impeach Blair after his party wins?

[CAMANY]

34. I wish people would actually bother to learn

before they give an opinion.

As an american it might be easy to sit around wanting Blair gone and bitching about labour winning.

So who exactly would you prefer win? The conservatives so that bush can have an even bigger pal to do business with?

If you want labour to lose to get rid of blair then you're probably also a person who wants to vote green in some kind of attempt to believe you'll be getting rid of DINOs with something better.

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. I'm not sure who you're aiming your comments at

But there are plenty of reasons for wanting the Labour vote lower, without it meaning that the Tories get to run the country.

The lower the Labour vote, the more damaged Blair looks. If Labour gets an absolute majority of seats, which is by far the most likely scenario, the lower the majority, the more the pressure on him to go early, since he will be 'damaged goods'.

The lower the Labour vote, the easier it is for rebel Labour MPs to stop some of Blair's authoritarian proposals, such as house arrest without trial.

You might even get a situation wher Labour gets a plurality of seats, but not an absolute majority. In that situation, the rebel Labour MPs, Lib Dems and minority parties like Plaid Cymru have a large influence over Labour. Blair would be gone for sure (because all the polls indicate Brown is far more popular than he is - people trust Brown, but not Blair).

The Tories need a huge swing in votes to actually get more seats than Labour. It would be the most unexpected result in British election history. The distribution of voting tendencies favoursd Labour enormously at the moment - Labour could win over 50% of the seats with only 33% of the votes.

[BlueManDude]

41. you are playing with fire

ask yourself - what result does mr bush want?

[muriel_volestrangler]

42. Well, Blair has worked out very well for him

So I think he's most hoping for a huge re-election of Blair - he knows he can control Blair, and will be able to say "look, people think invading Iraq was the right idea after all". After that he'd probably like the Tories - while they're a bit of an unknown quantity to him, they do share many of his basic beliefs, just like Tony does. After that, he'd put up with a reduced Labour majority that brings Brown in sooner (who didn't object to invading Iraq, and while he does have genuine convictions that redistribution of wealth to the less well off is good, Brown is still enthusiastic about the Private Finance Initiative, which is a way of increasing bank profits from the public purse). Least favourite of all for Bush would be a minority Labour governement - the leader (assume Brown) would have to spend his whole time holding his government together, and would have no time for foreign adventures.

So I think you're right - let's try to get a minority Labour government - which means many more people must vote against Labour than are currently planning. If the Labour vote drops from about 36% to 30% in the next 2 weeks, that should do it.

[AP]

44. You're kidding yourself if you don't think Bush wants Tories to win.

Didn't Rove advise the Tory party this year? Some of the Bush families best friends in the world are Tory politicians.

All hell is going to break loose if the Tories take back the government. You'll probably even get your pull out of Iraq in exchange of huge contracts for British weapons and energy companies.

[BlueManDude]

40. thank you camany

removing labour will have people around here jumping around in glee for 15 minutes - until they realize that a conservative government will be totally up bush's ass. the bushies would consider it the most delicious irony of all if they were able to not only re-elect themselves by using the iraq war but take down a labour gov't in the uk at the same time.

yeah blair was wrong on the war but he's not in bed with bush on anything else.

[AP]

47. Accent on "do business with" -- Blair may have British soldiers in Iraq,

but he is not "doing business" the Bush way.

Blair is still building up power for people who work for a living and he's not using Iraq to shift tons of taxpayer wealth to oil companies and weapons manufacturers, and I think there's a pretty good argument to be made that the UK's participation in Iraq is limiting the money that can be shifted from US taxpayers to private companies.

What do people think Halliburton would be making if they had the Basra contracts as well?

[muriel_volestrangler]

51. You mean like this?

This ongoing conflict over reconstruction work came to a head last October in a two-day wildcat strike at the Bergeseeya Oil Refinery near Basra. KBR – again – had been given a “no-bid” reconstruction contract to repair oil facilities. No “free market” when it comes to US companies! KBR brought in a Kuwaiti sub-contractor, construction company, Al Khoorafi, using cheaper Indian and Pakistani workers. To protect their jobs, the Iraqi workers threw them out and protested outside the company’s offices.

http://www.marxist.com/MiddleEast/what_role_iraqi_workers.html

Or this?

Purified drinking water is now available again in Basra, Iraq, thanks in part to the astonishing hard work put in by Kazema Industrial Products, the Brook Crompton agent for the region.
...
Kellog Brown Root (KBR), one of the major civil and project engineering companies entrusted with the reconstruction of Iraq, set out to organise a fast track project to get the plant operating again.

http://www.processingtalk.com/news/bkc/bkc100.html

The presence of British troops in Basra hasn't meant that Halliburton was kept out of the contracts in the area. After all, KBR gets contracts from Blair's MoD.

The KBR (Kellogg Brown & Root) and Mowlem plc joint venture, Aspire Defence, has been named by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as the provisional preferred bidder for the £4billion PFI contract to upgrade and provide a range of services to the British Army's garrisons at Aldershot and around Salisbury Plain.

http://www.halliburton.com/news/archive/2003/kbrnws_072303.jsp

[AP]

58. I didn't say they didn't do any business. But I bet you they'd be doing...

...much more if the Tories were in charge.

I bet you'd learn a great deal by comparing the sorts of contracts the US gov't and the British gov't enter into in Iraq, their costs and the results of those contracts, and by comparing what it's like in British and American controlled areas now, ten years from now and 75 years from now -- provided the Tories don't win an election in the UK in the next 10 years.

[CJCRANE]

54. I think you're right

in the sense that Blair is not ideologically the same as Bush. Blair is only centre-right (and heads a left-wing party).

It seems also that Blair joined in on the Iraq War in large part because he wanted to maintain the so-called "special relationship" with the USA.

[AP]

59. I think that he joined because it would be a disaster for Europe if the US

were all alone in Europe creating even greater chaos in the Middle East.

[woosh]

48. Good job Rupert.

[Zynx]

53. Um, a 60 seat majority is a HUGE hit on Labor.

Why can't the media ever report parlimentary elections correctly?

[T_i_B]

56. Even if they lose 60 seats

they would still have a majority of well over 100 seats (i.e a landslide). That's part of the reason why Blair felt safe enough to take Britain into the Iraq war.

[sonicx]

61. YouGov's poll is the only one with Labor's lead that small

Most other polls have Labor up above 4%. That would be another 100-seat walk.

[lala_rawraw]

55. Diebold?

[Anarcho-Socialist]

63. We don't have electronic voting n/t

[lala_rawraw]

64. I used it

As a catch-all for theft driven elections or something like that. Diebold in my mind is like the poster child of what is wrong with the US electoral system.