- The Guardian,
- Tuesday April 3 2001
The one point drop in the Conservative share of the vote to 34% compared with a similar Guardian/ICM poll a fortnight ago suggests that whatever the voters think about Labour's handling of the foot and mouth crisis, William Hague's Conservative party is not seen as a viable alternative. This is reflected in the fact that only 60% of Tory voters name Mr Hague for their choice of prime minister.
At first sight the 15 point lead for Labour may seem to be out of line with recent ICM polls. But Labour enjoyed a similar lead in February before the crisis really began to bite. Tony Blair's lead dropped to 9 points in the third week of March when a majority of voters were also saying he should delay the election.
About half of the people polled in this ICM survey were telephoned on Saturday and Sunday when the radio and television were already pumping out the message that Mr Blair was believed to have decided to delay until June.
It may be that while they didn't necessarily approve of the way the epidemic had been handled, the government was seen to respond to the most important demand, ie that the election be delayed.
For the Liberal Democrats, who had not fallen below the 15% mark since October 1997, the poll marks particularly dismal reading. On ICM's "variometer" which takes account of regional swing the Liberal Democrats' band of 47 MPs would be reduced to only 20 on this showing. Many Lib Dem seats are concentrated in areas most affected by the foot and mouth epidemic such as the south west, mid-Wales and the Scottish borders.
The fact that only 30% of Liberal Democrat voters see Charles Kennedy as making the best prime minister and 24% of them think Tony Blair does a better job may reflect the low profile of the party during the last fortnight.
What if Tony Blair had pressed ahead and announced yesterday that the election was going to be on May 3? The poll shows that some 9% of Labour voters would probably have decided not to vote for the party. The indications from the poll is that the price that Mr Blair would have paid for appearing so callous to the farmers would have been somewhere in the region of four points off his lead, putting Labour on 46% and the Conservatives on 35% - a difference of about 20 to 25 seats.
• ICM interviewed a random sample of adults aged over 18 by telephone between March 29-30, 2001. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults.
Special report: Foot and mouth disease
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