Will the BNP get a Question Time polling boost?
Is the controversy behind their 3 point polling share?
The full data and weightings for the first Politicalbetting/Angus Reid Strategies poll are now available for download here and here and I reproduce part of the main voting intention table above.
With future surveys it’s hoped that we’ll be able to make the detailed tables available at about the same time as the headline figures are published. As we get closer to the election I think that this will be invaluable.
One key number in all the polls that everybody will be watching will be the share for the BNP – who’ve been attracting a mass of media coverage in advance of tonight’s appearance of Nick Griffin on BBC1’s Question Time.
I can’t remember a non-election period when they’ve been getting so much attention and I expect that tonight’s programme will get a bigger audience than usual. One bookmaker, 
Steve Richards in the Independent makes a strong case against the BNP man’s participation. “…Griffin’s newsletter to his supporters yesterday highlights why the BBC was wrong. He describes tonight’s Question Time as a “milestone in the indomitable march of the BNP towards saving our country”. Showing an awareness of how the programme might play out he launched a pre-emptive strike: “I will no doubt be interrupted, shouted down, put on the spot… It will be political blood sport”.Griffin cannot lose. If he is given a hard time he will be the programme’s noble martyr. If he has an easy ride he will enjoy the journey.”
I disagree. Here we have a man who was legitimately elected to the European Parliament in June and it is hard to see how the BBC can do anything other than involve him in the political debate every now and then.