Survey of constituents about the Coalition

In my ward in Gateshead we are carrying out a survey of constituents about what they think of the Coalition. Today we launched the survey. I delivered 100 houses last night and this morning, my ward colleague John McClurey and I, called on the same houses to collect replies. We collected 19 and I expect some to come back by post. We will roll it out over the ward in coming weeks.

I haven't added the figures up at the moment. The numbers are too small at the moment to have any serious value. When we have over 100 replies, I will start to publish overall results on a rolling basis. That said however, the early replies are very encouraging with overwhelming support for the Coalition. We are also asking people about changing the voting system and again, the support for change is looking good.

One point raised is that some people want to see how things go over the coming months before making a final judgement on whether or not a coalition is a good idea. This is an understandable position to adopt and the survey gives people the option of reserving judgement.

The door knocking took longer than expected as we found more people wanted to talk and we broke our own rules by accepting an invite to go into someone's house and continue the conversation over coffee!

We also called in to the Sunniside Chapel fayre this morning. Again, the comments people made to us about the coalition were that it was the right decision in the circumstances and people were pleased that we got many of our policies in the Coalition Agreement. I also bumped into one of my former primary school teachers, Mrs Atkinson, who taught me 40 years ago. Nice that she remembered me after 4 decades!

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