Elmer Fudd

I think's it a bit cruel to ask potential voters to compare their politicians with cartoon characters because, let's face it, not one can come out really well from such an exercise.

But having said that I imagine David Cameron is a lot happier with Dick Dastardly than Ed Miliband will be with the hapless Elmer Fudd.

Meanwhile Lord Ashcroft who has been a bit of a thorn in the side of his own party for years, must be delighted that his most recent poll suggests that Labour are in for a bit of a kicking in Scotland. 

Lord Ashcroft basks in limelight as his polls look set to transform election

Billionaire Tory peer’s unique constituency-by-constituency polls could see unprecedented tactical voting in marginal seats in May

Lord Ashcroft is estimated to have spent more than £2m on recent polling, and could spend another £1m before 6 May. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

By Robert Booth - The Guardian

Lord Ashcroft is having fun. The billionaire Tory peer, who is ploughing a small fortune into the finest-grained polling ever seen at a UK general election, is revelling in his new nickname as Britain’s “Pollfather”. Since resigning from Conservative central office in 2010 where he had run polling and funded a target seats campaign for David Cameron, he doesn’t have to toe any party line. So, as well as publishing a stream of unique constituency-by-constituency polls which many believe will enable unprecedented tactical voting in May, he is enjoying publicly teasing the prime minister.

This week, as a kind of amuse bouche ahead of Wednesday’s seat-by-seat poll of the Scottish election landscape, he asked Twitter followers which cartoon characters the party leaders resembled? The answers he seemed to like most were Dick Dastardly for David Cameron, the “ineffectual” Fred Jones from Scooby Doo for Nick Clegg and Elmer Fudd for Ed Miliband, “in perennial but fruitless pursuit of the prime ministerial wabbit”.

The wheeze sets the tone for what is poised to be a disruptive operation in the coming weeks as Ashcroft’s pollsters drill into voter intentions in single seats, increasing the pressure on marginal battlegrounds. The 68-year old has dismissed national polls as “simply mood music” and declared “it’s all in the marginals” where his polls could arm voters with the knowledge required to keep out their least favourite parties. So, if Ashcroft shows that only Ukip can keep out Labour in one seat or the Tories in another, voters who traditionally back the big parties might feel happier than ever to swing behind Nigel Farage’s insurgents.

“It is payback time for Cameron,” said one leading pollster who asked not be named. “There are no holds barred. He is asking the difficult questions and tackling all the difficult seats.”

Labour and Lib Dems face election bruising in Scotland, poll predicts

Ashcroft has been a lifelong supporter of the Conservatives and is estimated to have donated as much as £10m to the party. His business career was founded on his turnaround of the Hawley Group, a business services operation that was rebranded as ADT following a merger. He oversaw its sale in 1997 for £3.7bn. Since then he has grown a financial services business in Belize, a Commonwealth nation in the Caribbean where he holds dual citizenship and spent part of his childhood as a result of his father’s posting to what was then British Honduras.
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In 2000, Ashcroft was knighted and became a member of the House of Lords and was party treasurer under William Hague’s leadership from 1997 to 2001, becoming deputy chairman from 2005 to 2010 under Cameron.

But his interests in Belize triggered a controversy about his tax status, which given his role as a funder of the Conservative party, came under fierce scrutiny. He had made private assurances about his tax status to Hague when he became a peer and in 2010 he confirmed that he was not domiciled in the UK for tax purposes, which would have allowed him to avoid paying UK tax on some of his earnings overseas. A few months later he said he had given up the non dom status in order to stay in the House of Lords.

The bruising row dogged the runup to the last election. This time, in what could be seen as his second political career as a pollster, he is enjoying more praise and admiration for his work. Fellow pollsters recognise the rigour of his polling and its ability to transform the way the election campaign is understood by voters and political strategists alike. The impression is of a man re-invigorated, who believes he can have more influence outside his party than from within.

One pollster estimated Ashcroft has already spent more than £2m on the project and given each poll is several times more expensive than a national survey as a result of set up costs, he could lay out another £1m before 6 May. Another guessed he must have spent at least £1m so far. In the last nine months Ashcroft has polled 125 English and Welsh seats and the results make tough reading for many. In November the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, led Labour in his Sheffield Hallam by just three points. In Bermondsey, south London, the Liberal Democrat justice minister, Simon Hughes, was only one point ahead of Labour in September. These polls have the potential to be powerful. In 1997 Michael Portillo famously lost his hitherto safe Enfield and Southgate seat days after The Observer published a constituency poll showing he only had a three-point lead.

“There is an element of public service in keeping politicians on their toes,” Ashcroft has said.

Dundee West: where Labour voters seem to be very thin on the ground

Peter Kellner, president of YouGov, said Ashcroft “does his very best to produce accurate data”, but warned constituency polls present difficulties for pollsters. “Compared with national polls, constituency-specific demographic data tends to be more sparse and less up-to-date, so it’s more of a challenge to design a representative sample,” he said. “Local factors – eg the tactical situation, and any incumbency bonus – sometimes don’t kick in until the final stages of an election campaign, so even a completely accurate poll some weeks in advance may not predict the final result locally”.

Aschcroft began polling in 2005 when he commissioned research to find out why his party had failed to recover from Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide. He published the results in a book called Smell The Coffee: A Wake-Up Call For The Conservative Party.

In a rare interview last week he told Sky News: “I believe that many politicians who seek the democratic mandate do not know exactly themselves what moves the X from one box to the other, though they believe they do and I have found it very fascinating to listen to politicians who believe that certain policies will persuade the voters to come to them yet when you go to speak to those groups of voters it isn’t correct.”

Tim Montgomerie, a commentator who contributes to the Conservative Home website which is owned by Ashcroft wrote last month: “This could be the election when because of so many close and multi-cornered fights, tactical voting becomes massive. Lord Ashcroft’s polling will ensure that it can be informed tactical voting. It’s quite a public service.”

Ben Page, the director of Ipsos Mori, said: “We will see how accurate they are closer to the election. If you live in an marginal constituency and you have this level of information it gives you the chance to vote tactically. Anything that gives people more information will be useful as long as Ashcroft is fully transparent about what he is doing, and he seems to be.”