Stephan Shakespeare: Stephen Fry & Eddie Izzard v the England Rugby Team ...

Stephan Shakespeare is a founder and global CEO of YouGov. Follow Stephan on Twitter.

People

are not good at predicting their own behaviour, so pollsters are wary

of drawing conclusions from questions that ask “what would you do

if…?” The standard voting intention question itself – ‘if a general

election

were held tomorrow, which party would you vote for?’ – is tricky to

answer: it invites people to use the question as a proxy, to express

approval or (more likely) disapproval for the government today, rather

than make a realistic prediction about their future

choice.

That of course is why oppositions need to be significantly

ahead between elections if they are actually to win at the deciding

moment, when the risk-averse impulse of ‘better the devil you know’

comes into full force.  That’s why we often see a pro-government

swing when the election campaign formally starts. Remember April 2010?

The Conservatives were comfortably ahead in all polls, and everyone

expected a clear win; but YouGov’s ‘starting-flag’ survey for the Sunday

Times showed a sudden drop that indicated we

were heading for coalition.

I

say all that by way of introducing caution to an analysis of polling

we’ve conducted on whether Boris Johnson would help or worsen

Conservative prospects. Caution because firstly, Labour’s current 9 per cent

lead means that

Conservatives could well still end up as the largest party in the

normal course of things. Secondly, the destructive drama of a leadership

challenge would be likely to have a negative effect on the party’s

prospects. I present our Johnson findings for what they

tell us about how Conservatives can widen their appeal, rather than as a

prediction of what might happen if there was a different leader.

• 30 per cent of the intending voters in this sample said they would vote
  
  Conservative with Cameron in charge, and 36 per cent said they would vote
  
  Conservative with Johnson. Using the rich background data we have on our
  
  samples, we could find out
  
  a lot more about the added six per cent, and a striking picture emerges: although
  
  Johnson wins back a significant group from UKIP, his main added value
  
  is his appeal to the nation’s centre – to younger, liberal, less
  
  political voters, exactly the people the Tory modernisers
  
  have been aiming to attract.
  

• The Johnson ‘gain’ is on both flanks of the Conservative Party: yes, 40 per cent
  
  comes from UKIP, but the bulk come from the mainstream, and they are not
  
  of the traditional Conservative profile. If they voted in 1997, the Johnson
  
  switchers were much more likely to have voted for Blair than the
  
  Cameron Tories.
  

Of the Boris switchers:

• 23 per cent voted LD last time.

• 17 per cent didn’t vote.

• Only 24 per cent see themselves as Conservatives (compared to 63 per cent of the Cameron Tories)

• 39 per cent don’t identify with any party (compared to only 14 per cent of Cameron Tories)

• 21 per cent are aged 18-24 (compared to 10 per cent of Cameron Tories)

• 30 per cent earn under £25K (compared to 22 per cent of Cameron Tories)

• 36 per cent are C2DE (compared to 25 per cent of Cameron Tories)

• 51per cent work full-time (compared to 57 per cent of Cameron Tories)

• 18 per cent work in the public sector (compared to 15 per cent of Cameron Tories)

• 59 per cent are owner-occupiers (compared to 76 per cent of Cameron Tories)

• They are more likely
  
  to be C4 and BBC3 viewers; more likely to use social media (both
  
  Twitter and Facebook); less likely to own a car; more likely to play
  
  video games (24 per cent v 19 per cent) and be interested in arts (25 per cent vs 18 per cent).
  
  On income, age, party ID, social grade, working status, property
  
  ownership, and personality traits they resemble non-Tory voters more
  
  than Cameron Tories. On region and media consumption they show the same
  
  traditional Tory distribution, not biased to London,
  
  for example.
  

To understand this

group from a different angle, we also used a new technique that YouGov

has been developing, Opigram. This is a technology that allows our

panelists to tell us more about themselves (proactively rather

than in a survey), and rate things similar to ‘liking’ something on

Facebook (but more detailed and structured). As a result we know a huge

amount about sections of our panel that allows us to explore populations

in much more depth, and use statistical techniques

to suggest essential differentiators.

I can give just a

little taste here. For example, when we look at the words the Johnson-likers use to describe themselves, we find ‘individualistic,

knowledgeable, disorganised’, versus Cameron-likers seeing themselves

as ‘friendly, organised and hardworking’.

We

can describe the differences between the two sets of supporters in

terms of relationships to thousands of brands, books, movies,

institutions, and personalities. There’s a significantly increased

probability that fans

of Boris Johnson are also fans of -

• The Independent, Nigel Farage, Ross
  
  Noble, Bill Bailey, Dara O’Briain, the Evening Standard, Jeremy Paxman,
  
  Pulp Fiction, Ian Hislop, Green Day, Science and Technology Websites,
  
  Jeremy Clarkson, Clive Anderson, Muse, Eddie
  
  Izzard, Jimmy Carr, Brave New World, David Mitchell, Dylan Moran,
  
  Stephen Fry, David Bowie, Nirvana, Music/Video Streaming and Downloading
  
  Websites, Jimi Hendrix, Rob Brydon, and Aubergine Parmigiana. 

By

contrast, among Cameron fans it’s -

• Prince William, Margaret
  
  Thatcher, Just a Minute, Bill Gates, Nelson Mandela, Anneka Rice, the
  
  England National Rugby Union Team, and Andy Murray.

True,

much can be derived simply from knowing that Johnson has a greater appeal

to younger voters. But there’s more to it: the Johnson attraction has

something of the ‘outsider’ to it, whereas DC is all about the

establishment.

It

would be stupid to propose changing leaders, but Conservatives should

be much more serious about understanding the added reach of Johnson,

rather than just dismissing it with irritation. To win the next

election, Conservatives

need to move outside their familiar comfort zones.

Why has Johnson got

support from the very people the party has assiduously targeted but

failed to win over? Is it just by magic that he became London mayor with a

big chunk of liberal votes, and held on to them

against trend? My own view is that the essence of Johnson is his ability

to surprise: he is never quite as you expect him, either funnier, or

cleverer, or bolder.  That’s why we always notice him and he enters our

imagination. We thought he’d be amusing at the

Olympics, but he was much more, encapsulating everything good about it.

 

Many

Tory strategists think it clever to brush aside consideration of Boris’

vote-winning appeal. When new votes are scarce, but essential for

victory, that’s crazy. And our analysis shows Boris succeeds precisely

where

the Conservatives must grow if they are to be a serious force in the

future – among the young and unpolitical, and on both flanks of the

political spectrum.

 

Continuity

and competence are strong suits for Cameron, but he must take some

risks to broaden his appeal. I saw him at an event recently and he oozed

such complete command of his role; it all seemed too easy for him.

Being Prime Ministerial doesn’t have to mean being so comfortably

establishment. He needs to find some of that edginess, some of that

ability to surprise, that he had when he first went on his quest to be

leader and challenged the status quo.

 

Wednesday, June 19, 2013 in Stephan Shakespeare | Permalink

Stephan Shakespeare: Stephen Fry & Eddie Izzard v the England Rugby Team ...