Tories take an 8 point lead with TNS-BMRB
CON 39% (33.2)
LAB 31% (36.2)
LD 19% (22.7)
LAB>CON swing on 2005: 5.7%
Yet another pollster enters the fray
There’s a new voting intention survey out tonight from the Edinburgh-firm, TNS-BMRB, which has just started doing general election polls for the whole of Britain. The firm is well-established in Scotland and does regular political surveys north of the border.
Apparently they had a poll out last week with a four point lead which I missed when I was on holiday. The comparisons above are not with that poll but with the outcome in 2005.
TNS-BRMB has a unique approach. Polling is done face to face to face but interviewees fill in the survey forms on a lap-top provided by the interviewer to help ensure confidentiality. According to Anthony Wells of UKPR they do weight by past vote and take account of certainty to vote. TNS is a member of the British Polling Council.
What’s should be welcomed is that we now have a range of firms almost all of them with their own bespoke approaches. I think that that is a good thing and, on reflection, I was wrong in the last thread for criticising YouGov for not following other firms by past vote weighting.
Whatever the movement in this latest survey will bring some cheer to the blues and might just worry the red team.
UPDATE: The firm has issued a press release about the survey which makes this point:-
“…perhaps the most interesting voters are those making the big switch from Labour to Conservative. One in ten (11%) 2005 Labour voters are in this camp. The younger and more prosperous end of Labour’s 2005 support is more likely to make this switch than the older, lower income end…”