In recent weeks, the election of the Commons Speaker has dominated headlines. Sir Alan Haselhurst, Frank Field and Ming Campbell stood out as favourites among the media and the bookies; while John Bercow was seen as more of an outsider, with Ladbrokes offering 8:1 odds on him becoming the next Speaker. Before the vote took place, we asked the members of the “ComRes MP Panel” which way they would vote.
Despite the apparent volatility of the political climate, our MP Panel once again proved its accuracy, correctly predicting the outcome of the vote and demonstrating that - right from the start - John Bercow had such a groundswell of support among Labour and Lib Dem MPs, that it would have been hard for anyone to catch him in the race for the Speaker’s chair.
Between 1st-19th June 2009, we surveyed 104 MPs on the ComRes MP Panel by self-completion postal questionnaire, asking them “Who do you intend to vote for as Speaker of the House?”. As the table below shows, ComRes accurately predicted that John Bercow would become the next Speaker of the House. We also identified Sir George Young as Bercow’s nearest rival, with most of the other candidates achieving a far smaller proportion of the vote.
Candidate
Official first round percentage of the vote
ComRes prediction
JOHN BERCOW
30%
25%
SIR GEORGE YOUNG
19%
10%
MARGARET BECKETT
12%
3%
SIR ALAN HASELHURST
11%
3%
SIR ALAN BEITH
9%
5%
ANN WIDDECOMBE
7%
6%
PARMJIT DHANDA
4%
0%
RICHARD SHEPHERD
3%
0%
SIR PATRICK CORMACK
2%
0%
SIR MICHAEL LORD
2%
0%
Despite the seeming unpredictability over who would win the final vote, John Bercow actually enjoyed a significant amount of support from MPs from the start, making it very difficult for any of his rivals to pip him to the post. Our survey results show that 41% of Labour MPs intended to vote for Bercow in the first round, along with 17% of Lib Dems. None of the Conservative MPs surveyed intended to lend Bercow their support!
In 2006, ComRes used our MP Panel to predict the outcome of the free vote on the smoking ban to within 1% accuracy. We are delighted that, even as allegiances and voting intentions seemed to change minute by minute during the lead up to the vote on the Speaker, our panel has shown itself to be accurate, enabling us to foresee the way the vote would unfold before it happened.
But ComRes aren’t the only ones to have predicted the results correctly... Asked who would walk away as Speaker, 44% of the MPs we surveyed predicted that it would be John Bercow; and 14% thought it would be Sir Young. It seems that both MPs themselves and ComRes have our fingers on the pulse when it comes to gaining advanced insight into the mood of the House!