Labour still on 22pc with ComRes
CON 39(+1) LAB 22(nc) LD 18 (-2)
But why’s there so much variation in the Labour numbers?
All but one of the Westminster polls since the June 4th elections have shown the Tories either on 39% or 40%. Where there’s been a big variation has been with the Labour shares.
While all of them now have the party in the 20s and in second place the percentages range from 22% to 27% which is outside the margin of error.
The Tories will be pleased with tonight’s healthy seventeen-point lead although they would like to be back into the 40s. Even though the Lib Dems are down a couple of points the last Comres poll, they’ll take heart from being within 4% of Labour.
As a general point, as I’ve written here many times before, I’m much less confident about the ComRes polling approach because I can’t get my head round what they are doing with their past vote weightings. These should, like with ICM and Populus, be fairly consistent from poll to poll – with ComRes they seem to move about all over the place.
In this poll the weightings are pretty close to ICM’s which I’m comfortable with. It’s when they deviate too much from that when ComRes can come up with odd outcomes.
The shares for the “others” in the poll are UKIP 6%: GRN 4%: SNP 2% BNP 2%: PC 1%