An emerging trend? LAB voters are now more likely to say they are certain to vote
The trend over the past few years
New analysis from @IpsosMORI shows CON voters now less certain to vote than LAB ones. http://t.co/WbBIclp73V
Chart pic.twitter.com/wcbQPw6nTi
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) February 4, 2014
How higher certainty levels boosted LAB in this poll
Ipsos-MORI Jan 2014 Political Monitor pic.twitter.com/PYmcnHH54B
— PolPics (@PolPics) February 5, 2014
There’s an interesting article by Ipsos-MORI’s Roger Mortimer on the way that LAB voters are increaingly saying that they are more certain to vote than CON ones.
This matters a lot to Ipsos-MORI whose headline figures each month are restricted solely to those saying they are 100% certain. Look at the chart above from their last poll to see the difference it makes. A LAB lead of 5% from all those expressing a voting intention became a 9% one when the certainty filter kicked in.
Mortimer observes:-
“When the Conservatives were able to combine the advantages of opposition with their own natural advantage of drawing their core support from the heavily-voting groups of the public, they had a big lead over Labour in their ability to turn their raw support into votes; now, with Labour reaping the opposition benefits, the two forces work in opposite directions and things are more finely balanced.
What the change means is that filtering the voting intentions by certainty of voting will have less of a pro-Conservative effect on our headline figures, and sometimes (when the red line in the chart edges above the blue one) may even favour Labour instead…”
The real issue, though, is not what those surveyed tell pollsters but what they do on election days. It is noticeable that as we get closer to elections that certainty levels rise.