Stephan Shakespeare

YouGov’s Stephan Shakespeare on how the public would view the four candidates — if they were all better known Up to now, polls on the Conservative leadership have been flawed in a fundamental way: they have tried to gauge public reaction to a group of candidates, when one of them is much better known than the rest. But this contest is about the future — about how they might be regarded after they become leader, when the public gets to know them better. And so YouGov and The Spectator designed a poll to get some vital added insight. First, we asked 4,000 people representative of the UK electorate how likely they were to vote for each of the main parties, on a scale from 0 to 10. Labour’s average rating was 4.0, the Conservatives’ 3.

Only 15 per cent of people in Britain are aware that the EU is drafting a constitution. That's up 5 per cent from the month before (our YouGov poll for The Spectator was taken after wide coverage in the media at the end of last week), but still says little for the success of the EU in 'engaging' with citizens in its most important considerations. In conducting this poll, we first gave respondents a brief explanation about what a constitution is. Then we told them how the European constitution is being developed, and outlined a few of the things it might contain. Thirty-nine per cent approved of the general idea of creating a European constitution (with 42 per cent opposed).

If floating voters had to choose between the Conservative party and the Liberal Democratic party, a clear majority of them would choose the Lib Dems, according to a poll conducted for The Spectator. And almost half of them believe it likely that the Lib Dems will take over from the Tories within five years. Floating voters make up as much as 30 per cent of the electorate, while core Tory voters make up about 25 per cent, core Labour 30 per cent, and core Lib Dems perhaps 15 per cent. When floating voters decide whether or not to walk down to the polling booth, they ask themselves two questions: does any party offer me something I really want? And, if so, does it have a chance of winning?