Political Commentary - David Cameron's First Year
2 February 2007
Ipsos MORI's first Political Monitor of 2007 shows the Conservatives leading Labour by 4 points (39% vs 35%), based on those who say they are "absolutely certain" (50% of the total sample of 1,955 British adults, 18+) to vote in an immediate general election. This puts the Tory share now higher than it was during most of the Autumn, and represents a swing of 3.5% from Labour since the 2005 general election.

Who's The Pretty Boy Then?
24 January 2007
As a matter of fact, David Cameron, at least that's what the recent Ipsos MORI poll in the Sun reported, even if he's seen as the best of a bad bunch.

MORI's Polling Performance In The 2005 Election
14 December 2006
MORI's final poll of the 2005 election campaign, published in the London Evening Standard on election day, predicted the Conservative and Liberal Democrat shares of the vote spot-on, and missed Labour by two percentage points - an average error of 0.67 points on the three major parties, well within the normally accepted margins of error.

Are You Happy?
13 December 2006
Are you happy? Nearly nine people in ten say they are. In the immediate run up to Christmas 86% of the 967 people phoned told Ipsos MORI interviewers that they were either "very" (38%) or "fairly" (48%) happy with their life at present, while just 7% admitted to woe.

Cameron's "Female Touch" A Myth
27 November 2006
The idea that Cameron has a "female touch" that Brown is lacking is a myth according to new polling evidence released today.

What The Public Thinks Of The Party Leaders (And The Leader-In-Waiting)
15 September 2006
The public's detailed image of the Prime Minister has deteriorated significantly in the last 18 months, analysis of data from the Ipsos MORI Political Monitor shows; but while Gordon Brown's image is better, it shares many of the most negative characteristics of Mr Blair's. The poll, conducted at the start of September (before the recent public falling out over the Prime Minister's retirement date) finds that Mr Brown, like Mr Blair, is primarily seen as out of touch, though the public also admit that he has sound judgment, a description they are reluctant to apply to Tony Blair, and many more people describe him as inflexible, tending to talk down to people and narrow minded than have the same impression of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders.

Ethnic Minority Voters And Non-Voters At The 2005 British General Election
9 September 2006
On Saturday 9 September 2006, Dr Roger Mortimore (Ipsos MORI's Senior Political Analyst) spoke at the EPOP Conference in Nottingham*, on "Ethnic Minority Voters and Non-Voters at the 2005 British General Election", delivering a paper by himself and Kully Kaur-Ballagan (Ipsos MORI Head of Ethnic Minority Research). The paper, which draws on Ipsos MORI research conducted for the Electoral Commission after last year's election, explores the turnout and votes of Britain's various Black and minority ethnic (BME) communities. Turnout is strongly associated with a positive attitude to elections in general, as might be expected; but there is also some evidence of a strong community effect, with those who live in areas with many other BME residents disproportionately likely to have voted. Surprisingly, there is no evidence that attitudes to the government's policy in Iraq had any significant effect. The findings also illustrate how a high quality research design, including respondents from...

Volatility And Public Opinion
20 August 2006
Some commentators have noted in recent months that Ipsos MORI's voting intention figures are "more volatile" than those of the other companies, which in one sense is true; but they have also assumed that this implies they are less accurate, which is not necessarily the case, and some of them have clearly not understood why our figures sometimes move more dramatically than those in other polls.

A Little Local Problem — A Review Of The May Local Elections
1 June 2006
The 2006 local elections represent a clear and embarrassing defeat for Labour. The party was relegated to third place in terms of the "estimated national equivalent vote share", (the generally accepted measure of the major parties' local election performance), with only 26% of the vote. It made a net loss of more than three hundred seats, and controls 18 fewer councils than it did before the elections. While this was not, as some had predicted beforehand, Labour's worst-ever local election performance — in fact, the 26% share was the same as in 2004 — it was a very poor one.

Captains Of Industry Survey
3 January 2006
Once again, for sixth time, John Browne, Lord Browne of Madingley, has been voted by his corporate peers as the most impressive business person in Britain. This puts John Browne back in pole position, after last year losing out to Tesco's Chairman Sir Terry Leahy.