Cross-posted from The Wardman Wire:

As the dust settles and the hard numbers start to become available, it increasingly looks as if key parts of the grand picture painted during the US presidential election were wrong. This picture – of unprecedented interest by ordinary people in the election – was repeatedly illuminated with stories of record numbers of people voting and donating.

We already know that the voting story is largely myth, with turnout looking like it will come out up just 1% on 2004. It also now looks as if the picture of record numbers of people donating was misleading because, far from being driven principally by a huge army of small donors, Barack Obama’s campaign received pretty much the same amounts of money from small donors as previous campaigns and, whilst he did receive large sums in small donations overall, he also received large sums in medium sized and large donations too. His fundraising success was across the board, rather than fuelled particularly by an army of small donors.

The difference between donations and donors

The crucial piece of evidence hinges on the difference between donations and donors. An analysis by the Campaign Finance Institute of the data available so far shows that Obama’s campaign did receive an unprecedented number of small donations – 49% of its money came in donations of $200 or less, compared with only 32% of George W Bush’s 2004 campaign. But many of these donations were from people who donated repeatedly. As a result, only 26% of his funds came from donors who in total gave $200 or less, a mere 1% up on Bush’s 2004 25% figure.

The big difference came in the middle-range donors, that is those who ended up giving between $210 and $999. These gave 27% of Obama’s funds, compared with 13% of Bush’s. The big end donors, those who gave $1000 and up, contributed 47% of Obama’s funds, down markedly from Bush’s 60%, but still nearly half.

In other words, whilst Obama’s campaign did bring in huge numbers of small donations, his fundraising success came as much from big donors and bringing in repeated donations building up to middle-range totals as it did from having a large army of small donors.

What does it matter what the truth was?

In one sense, this doesn’t matter, because whilst having 47% of funds coming from large donors is high, it is still so much lower than other presidential campaigns (including McCain’s 59% and Kerry’s 2004 56%) that it points towards a political future in which political influence is more equally shared, and not just dominated by large donors.

But in another sense, it matters very much – because it means those looking to draw fundraising conclusions from Obama’s campaign are missing the true picture if they think it’s all a matter of using the internet to build a large army of small donors. Obama also had huge success at bringing in money from large donors, and in turning initial small donors into repeated givers. Not that many of them though migrated up to become big donors; the big donor fundraising was largely a separate group of people.

It is a three-pronged approached that is the lesson: small one-ones, regular small donations and large donors that brought in the money for him. Across all three of these areas he had success. This was a campaign fuelled by funds from all sources, not just an army of one-off small donors.

Haringey Council Chief Executive, Ita O’Donovan was previously city manager at Stoke-on-Trent Council (the top staff person in their then directly elected Mayor system). Her departure to become Haringey Chief Executive was announced in November 2005, and Ita O’Donovan took up post in Haringey in March 2006.

And in that same month, March 2006, the then Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes wrote that council failings were putting children in Stoke at risk:

In one letter, dated 15 March 2006, the minister wrote to [Stoke Mayor] Mr Meredith saying a report into care provided by Stoke City Council showed there were “critical weaknesses” which could contribute to children being put at risk. (Source: BBC)

Those weaknesses in children’s services were therefore there whilst Ita O’Donovan was in post. It looks to me that there are some serious questions for Ita O’Donovan, especially given the response to warnings made directly to her about problems in Haringey’s care for children, as Lynne Featherstone MP recounts:

I then asked for a meeting, and finally managed to get one with George Meehan on 31st January 2008. Ita O’Donovan (Chief Executive of Haringey) was in attendance at George’s request - so it was Haringey’s more senior politician and most senior member of staff at the meeting.

I brought the case histories and the letters with me and went over my extreme concerns with them both. They assured me they were as concerned as I was and Ita O’Donovan said she was looking at this in particular and commissioning an expert examination (I believe that is what she said).

But chasing letters following the meeting asking what had happened were not responded to.

Hat-tip: an anonymous comment on Lynne Featherstone’s blog for highlighting Ita O’Donovan’s Stoke background.

Iain Dale has the leaked email and the story here.

Over the last week or two, Lib Dem Voice has invited the members of our private forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the party and the current state of British politics. Many thanks to the 210+ of you who completed it; we’ve been publishing the results on LDV over the past week.

Today we turn our attention to the performance of the Liberal Democrat shadow cabinet. And little did I know when I prepared this for publication quite how topical the subject would be, with well-sourced rumours of an imminent reshuffle! For the record, Steve Webb, Chris Huhne, Julia Goldsworthy and David Laws (all mentioned by name in yesterday’s Mirror story) are all rated positively by LDV-reading party members.

Reproduced below are the full results of our survey, which shows how effective each MP is felt by members to be, together with a net satisfaction rating (those who think they’re very/fairly effective minus those think they’re very/fairly ineffective). The list is a long one, so here’s the skinny…

First of all, who’s at the top of the charts…

Top 5:
Vince Cable: +94%
Chris Huhne: +67%
Norman Baker: +64%
Lynne Featherstone: +57%
Norman Lamb +45%

Then we have the ones who, erm, aren’t at the top of the charts…

Bottom 5:
Edward Davey -6%
Stephen Williams: -16%
Roger Williams: -18%
Nick Harvey: -18%
Michael Moore: -26%

And then let’s look at those who have increased their ratings most over the past month…

5 highest climbers:
Lynne Featherstone +27%
Sarah Teather +25%
Willie Rennie +16%
Norman Lamb +15%
Simon Hughes +14%

Finally, for the first time this month, we asked about other leading Lib Dem figures outside the shadow cabinet – here’s your net satisfaction rating for each of them:

Ros Scott, Party President-elect of the Liberal Democrats +52%
Tavish Scott MSP, Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats +16%
Mike German AM, Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats -25%
Andrew Duff, Leader of the UK Lib Dem MEPs -6%
Mike Tuffrey, Leader of the Liberal Democrat group on the London Assembly -21%

Full results follow: Read more »

Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free blog, Lynne Featherstone MP writes about the devastating Baby P report into Haringey Council. Read it in full here, but here’s Lynne’s trenchant critique:

I have never seen such a damning and devastating criticism of an authority as this litany of failure – both systemic and personal, and at every level and, more or less, in every agency. But particularly singled out for special damnation: Haringey council. So, given all that, what an earth is Ed Balls doing commissioning more reports and waiting until next June before removing Haringey children’s services from council administration? … we need children in Haringey who are at risk to be held safe in full special measures and only given back to Haringey itself as the department is changed, new management structures put in, and staff either retrained, sacked or exonerated, depending on their part and culpability.

Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free blog, James Graham takes a frank and forthright look at the unguarded remarks allegedly uttered by Nick Clegg within the hearing of a Mirror journalist. Read it in full here, but here’s the conclusion:

The generous interpretation is that Clegg, like both Kennedy and Ashdown before him, needs to fight a general election before he can expect to acquire a decent public profile. Broadly speaking, I happen to still believe that. But while Clegg, the odd blip aside, isn’t the liability his opponents might wish him to be, thus far he has failed to be much of an asset either. In lieu of having much to bring to the table himself, he depends on the goodwill of his team. Mouthing off in public like this can only sap that.

We tend not to be too poll-obsessed here at LDV - of course we look at them, as do all other politico-geeks, but viewed in isolation no one poll will tell you very much beyond what you want to read into it. Looked at over a reasonable time-span and, if there are enough polls, you can see some trends.

Here, in chronological order, are the results of the nine polls published in November:

Tories 43%, Labour 30%, Lib Dems 18% - ICM/Sunday Telegraph (9 Nov)
Tories 41%, Labour 35%, Lib Dems 16% - Populus/Times (10 Nov)
Tories 40%, Labour 37%, Lib Dems 12% - MORI, unpublished (14 Nov)
Tories 41%, Labour 36%, Lib Dems 14% - YouGov/Sunday Telegraph (16 Nov)
Tories 43%, Labour 32%, Lib Dems 12% - ComRes/Independent (16 Nov)
Tories 42%, Labour 31%, Lib Dems 19% - ICM/Sunday Mirror (21 Nov)
Tories 40%, Labour 36%, Lib Dems 14% - YouGov/Telegraph (26 Nov)
Tories 45%, Labour 30%, Lib Dems 18% - ICM/Guardian (29 Nov)
Tories 43%, Labour 32%, Lib Dems 15% - MORI/Observer (30 Nov)

Which gives us an average rating for the parties in November as follows, compared with October’s averages:

Tories 42% (-1%), Labour 33% (+2%), Lib Dems 15% (-1%)

In one sense, the story of November’s polling is easy to state: Labour gains a bit (again), at the expense of both the Lib Dems and Tories. And that may well be the underlying reality. But, as we at Lib Dem Voice have been noting for many months, your view of reality really does depend on which polling company you most trust.

This is certainly the case if you’re a Lib Dem, with the different polling companies’ methods exerting a disproportionate effect on Lib Dem support. Below is the party’s average rating according to the last five polls conducted by the main five polling companies:

ICM – 19%
ComRes – 17%
Populus - 17%
Mori – 14%
YouGov – 14%

Glass half-full Lib Dems will, very understandably, prefer to believe ICM, which consistently tends to show the party doing better than other pollsters (and which has a proven track record of accuracy over many years). Glass half-empty Lib Dems will point to Mori and YouGov’s significantly lower ratings. Many of us will choose to split the difference, and guesstimate that the party is hovering around 17% as suggested by ComRes and Populus.

In the past month, it’s not only been Lib Dem ratings which have fluctuated according to pollster; so, too, have Labour’s. There does seem to be something of an inverse relationship currently between Labour and Lib Dem ratings: in November, Labour’s highest ratings were from YouGov (36%, twice) and Mori (37%) – the two pollsters which show the Lib Dems doing least well; while ICM is pegging Labour support at 30% (twice) and 31% - while showing Lib Dem support within touching distance of 20%.

For the moment, at least, Tory support seems to be reasonably consistent, ranging between a within-the-margin-of-error 40-45%. Interestingly, it’s currently ICM which is proving to be the friendliest to the Tories, while YouGov, sometimes regarded with suspicion owing to its links to top Tory Stephan Shakespeare, is showing them at the lower range.

Blyth Valley: Labour Mayor switches to Liberal Democrats.
Islington: Conservatives choose lap-dancing establishment for their Christmas party.

We’d say a big thank you to the 48,671 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in November, our highest total ever, and a whopping 283% increase on a year ago. For the record, the comparable figure for Iain Dale was 64,552.

(It would only be proper to note, though, that the circumstances for the last month’s sudden surge were sad ones: a post entitled ‘Baby P‘ became (temporarily) the top Google return for that search term, and resulted in very heavy traffic.)

The recent trend for Lib Dem Voice is hugely positive:

Year on Year Absolute Unique Visitors +189%
1 Dec 2007-30 Nov 2008 204,484; 1 Dec 2006-30 Nov 2007 70,741

Absolute Unique Visitors +283% year on year
November 2008 48,671 - November 2007 12,702 - Oct 2008 22,628

Whether you’re a regular here, or an occasional ‘popper-by’, we’re delighted you looked in. And if you enjoy reading LDV, why not try writing for LDV?

* Google’s term: it broadly means people using over 48,000 different computers visited LDV at least once.

The newly published Thrasher & Rallings analysis of May’s local election results once again gives a breakdown of candidates and councillors by gender.

Here they are, with 2007’s figures in brackets:

31% (30%) of Conservative candidates were female
31% (30%) of Labour candidates were female
34% (34) of Liberal Democrat candidates were female

“28-29%” (29%) of Conservative councillors are female
“28-29%” (31%) of Labour councillors are female
“A third” (34%) of Liberal Democrats councillors are female

They conclude that:

The proportion of men and women candidates contesting local elections now appears fixed in the ratio 2:1 and the rapid rise in women candidates during the second half of the 1980s has stopped … There is just one authority, Purbeck district council, where women candidates outnumbered the men. By contrast, there are three local authorities in Wales where the proportion of women is fewer than one in five candidates.

Another trend that continues is for the percentage of women elected to be slightly less than the percentage of women candidates.

From The Guardian:

Fewer than half of teenagers left school with five good GCSEs including English and maths this summer, official figures revealed yesterday.

Some 47% of 16-year-olds across England achieved the basic target grades. The government said it was a 0.9 percentage point improvement on last year - and an 11.6-point increase since 1997 - but opposition MPs criticised the lack of progress in closing the achievement gap between rich and poor…

The GCSE results showed record rises in London, where 49.8% of pupils hit the target, beating the national average. The government claimed it as a success for the London Challenge programme, which offers tailored support to struggling schools, and the academy programme, which is most concentrated in the capital.

Improvement rates in academies continued to outstrip the national average with a rise of 2.9 percentage points in the proportion getting five good GCSEs, including English and maths, to 28.1%. This still leaves the average of academies below the government target of 30% that marks schools out for possible closure.

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat education spokesman, said: “It’s completely unacceptable that so many children are still not getting a good basic set of qualifications.

“These figures highlight the appalling fact that half of all children in English schools are still failing to get five good GCSEs including English and maths.”

Welcome to the 93rd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (23rd-29th November), together with a hand-picked quintet, mostly courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

There’s no doubt which tragic story has been dominating Lib Dem blogs this last week: the untimely death of Neil Trafford, a friend and colleague to many in the party throughout the country. Read more »

The Sunday Mirror reports a conversation between Nick Clegg and his chief of staff Danny Alexander conducted on a flight to Scotland. One of the newspaper’s journalists was sitting in the seat in front of the party leader, who apparently discussed his plans to reshuffle the shadow cabinet.

The paper claims that these include demoting Chris Huhne from Home Affairs and moving Steve Webb from the Climate Change portfolio, with David Laws taking his place. Julia Goldsworthy would move to Education and Webb to Justice.

We have no way of judging the accuracy of the report, which claims Nick Clegg also shared some choice comments about some of the colleagues he was planning to move. We should add:

His private spokeswoman said: “We don’t comment on reports of fragments of private conversations. Nick has said before and genuinely believes that he leads the strongest front bench in Westminster.”

Key alleged quotes, according to the Mirror:

Of Chris Huhne:

Clegg dismissed him for the key Environment job by saying the shadow cabinet needed someone “more emotionally intelligent”. He then talked of demoting Huhne.

Of Steve Webb:

“Webb must go,” he said. “He’s a problem. I can’t stand the man. We need a new spokesman. We have to move him. We need someone with good ideas. At the moment, they just don’t add up.”

Of David Laws:

Clegg said: “Laws is not enjoying Education. The Tories have left him no space. But he’s got a forensic intelligence – he’s probably the best brain we have.”
“Give David a day [at Environment] and he’ll come up with more good ideas than Webb has come up with in a year.”

Of Julia Goldsworthy:

“We have to move her [from Communities and Local Government] too. She gets patronised. And we can’t give her Foreign. She’s just not equipped to do it.”

The degree of accuracy in the reported comments is to a large extent irrelevant. What matters is that (i) Nick and Danny have placed themselves and colleagues in an embarrassing situation entirely of their own making (‘careless talk costs lives’), and (ii) relations between the leader and some of the party’s most talented shadow cabinet members will be unnecessarily strained today as a result.

As Nick himself commented in the Telegraph yesterday, in a somewhat different context, “you increasingly have to rely on whistle-blowers to see the full picture…”.

UPDATE: Nick said on today’s Politics Show: “I, as every senior politician read articles claiming what I’ve done, said or think. Almost all of them are wildly inaccurate. A lot of the Mirror article is frankly fiction.”

Over the last week or so, Lib Dem Voice has invited the members of our private forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the party and the current state of British politics. Many thanks to the 210+ of you who completed it; we’re publishing the results this week on LDV.

The last couple of months has seen the British political landscape transformed, with suggestions that Gordon Brown might take advantage of recession-induced panic to spring a quick general election. So we asked LDV-reading party members, When do you think the next general election will be held?

Here’s what you told us:

A ’snap’ election early in 2009 – 5.2%
Spring 2009 – 12.3%
June 2009 – 10.9%
Autumn 2009 – 6.1%
Spring 2010 – 38.2%
June 2010 – 20.3%
Don’t know / No opinion – 7.1%

In total, then one-third of you expect the general election to take place in 2009; but the majority of you – almost 60% - reckon we have another 15-18 months to wait.

We then asked What is your view of the most likely result of the next general election? Here’s what you told us (with the figures from September, when we last asked this question, in brackets):

A Conservative landslide – 2.4% (21.9%)
A working Conservative majority – 33.5% (60.4%)
Conservatives largest single party, but no majority – 38.2% (14.6%)
Labour largest single party, but no majority – 15.6% (0%)
A working Labour majority – 3.8% (0%)
Liberal Democrats largest single party, but no majority – 0.9% (-)
Don’t know / No opinion – 5.7% (3.1%)

A quite dramatic movement in opinion, then, pointing to the shifting political plates. In September, a whopping 80%+ of you believed the Tories were destined to form a government. Today, barely 35% of you think that. Instead, a majority of LDV-reading party members now believe the most likely result of the next general election is a hung Parliament, with either the Tories (38.2%) or Labour (15.6%) emerging with the most seats.

Finally, we asked your expectations