Newsnight: Voters prefer Reid to Brown

Mike Ion Tue Sep 26, 2006 at 04:17:46 AM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

Gordon Brown has not emerged as the voters' favoured future prime minister in research by the US pollster Frank Luntz, commissioned by BBC Newsnight.



John Reid emerged from the exercise as the clear favourite among the group.*

17 of the 30 questioned at the end of the exercise said they would most like to see John Reid as the next leader of the Labour party, as opposed to only 3 who voted for Gordon Brown.

What on earth are we to make of that?

*According to the Newsnight website the 30 voters were selected to represent the electorate who will decide Labour's future. One third were loyal Labourites, one third were Labour leaners. One third were floating voters who cast ballots for the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats but would consider switching to Labour if it chose the right leader. They were questioned during a three-hour session.


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Newsnight: Voters prefer Reid to Brown | 4 comments (4 topical)

Re: Newsnight: Voters prefer Reid to Brown (#1)

by Andrea on Tue Sep 26, 2006 at 02:02:06 PM GMT

"17 of the 30 questioned at the end of the exercise said they would most like to see John Reid as the next leader of the Labour party, as opposed to only 3 who voted for Gordon Brown"

3 voted John McDonnell and 0 voted Milburn, Miliband or Johnson.

I think that that kind of focus group also depends on what kind of clip they showed (they showed the focus group Brown on Marr 2 week ago when he had, among other things, to defend himself from the coup)


Re: Newsnight: Voters prefer Reid to Brown (#2)

by snowflake5 on Tue Sep 26, 2006 at 04:25:00 PM GMT

As Andrea said, it depends on what clips you show the group - eg would you have expected McDonnell to do better than Milliband, and do you accept that ranking?

As it happens, ICM did a similar excercise for the Guardian and the results were Brown first, Reid second and Johnson third.

Their method was to show identical silent films of Brown, Reid and Johnson.

I think people need to be very careful about the Luntz results - he's Cameron's spin-doctor, and the Tories seem anxious not to be faced with Brown. Reid has done a good job as Home Secretary, but middle class women don't like him.


Re: Newsnight: Voters prefer Reid to Brown (#3)

by red flagger on Tue Sep 26, 2006 at 05:32:21 PM GMT

Interesting to see that McDonnell scored a 3. I didn't think he'd get any, but as a supporter of his, I can only say that this marks the start of a glorious campaign!


Re: Newsnight: Voters prefer Reid to Brown (#4)

by MatthewStiles on Wed Sep 27, 2006 at 04:08:42 AM GMT

The Luntz focus group looked very dodgy to me (by the way check out his past history as a partisan Republican pollster). The people there were asked to compare each candidate as they made a speech. McDonnell was shown making a speech from the backbenches in Parliament reading from notes. Reid was at a major conference with a sky blue background, reading from an autocue, punctuated by rapturous applause etc.
Also, his speech was all about attacking the judges for being soft on foreign criminals, which probably went down well with the audience. So Reid scored the best. It seemed a textbook example of how focus groups can be swung.


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Newsnight: Voters prefer Reid to Brown | 4 comments (4 topical)