What a difference a day makes?
CON 41% (39)
LAB 29% (33)
LD 19%(17)
Is Labour paying the price for “BullyGate”?
So there we have it, the latest YouGov daily poll as reported by Conservativehome with comparisons on the YouGov daily poll that was published on Saturday night for the following day’s Sunday Times.
The turnaround is really quite extraordinary especially as the YouGov gap then was seen in the same area only a few hours ago in the February ICM poll for the Guardian.
So how can it be? The answer is simple – just recall what was going on at the time the fieldwork was taking place.
On Friday and Saturday when most of the ICM and all of the last YouGov survey was being carried out Labour was making the weather. Its new slogan and the Warwick gathering were getting the level of attention that you usually expect in conference season.
And then late on Saturday night there was Andrew Rawnsley to be followed the following evening by the National Bullying Hotline story. These were totally dominating the media when, at 5pm on Sunday evening, work on this latest YouGov survey started.
This was precisely the sort of move that was experienced last September/October when YouGov launched its experimental daily polls during conference season. To about 4% of voters what’s being covered in the news seems to matter enormously.
This could not have come at a better time for David Cameron or a worse one for Gordon Brown. The election is getting so much closer and there’s a world of difference between a six point and a twelve point lead. This latest poll also provides a boost for Nick Clegg’s party.
So have the bullying allegations created sea-change in opinon? We must be careful. What goes up can also go down and we need to wait for other post-bullygate poll before we can come to any firm conclusions.
One thing’s for certain – Mr. Rawnsley won’t be very high up the Brown family Christmas card list.
Please note I’m basing this on the ConHome story.
This site together with Politics Home share the same premises and resources. Their main backer is Stephan Shakespeare – the YouGov boss. I’m 99.9% certain that Tim Montgomerie or one of the team there will have access to the YouGov system and would not be able to publish without being able to verify the numbers.
There is no qualification in their coverage and they also have details of the Sun-specific questions.