Could we be about to see the first poll of July?
CON ?? (?) LAB ?? (?) LD ??(?)
What will the Guardian put the emphasis on?
I’ve just had it on good authority that fieldwork for the first poll of July (the last was completed on June 28th) was carried out by ICM from Friday until Sunday and if the Guardian are following their normal practice then we should get the figures this evening.
This is great news for all poll-watchers because it’s been so long since we last had any numbers to look at and argue about.
The only hitch could be if the paper decides to hold it over for a day which it does every four or five months.
Last month ICM had C39-L27-LD18 with 16 points for others – which is very high for ICM which tends to record much lower shares for this segment than the other firms.
The big questions are whether UKIP/GREEN/BNP will still be scoring at or near their June levels and whether the Guardian’s phone-tapping story – which had very big coverage during the fieldwork – will have had an impact?
There might be special questions on the phone-tapping issue – particularly on whether Coulson should stay in his job. These might constitute the paper’s lead with much less prominence to the voting intention figures.
As PB regulars will know I pay much less attention to non-voting intention questions than voting ones if only for the fact that the latter are turnout related. Who cares what the views are of those who say they won’t or have little intention of voting? The only ones I tend to highlight are those that are asked in the same format every month where we can look at historical trends.