The morning Marf cartoon – and is the lead 10/8/5/3?
Can we make sense of the differing polls?
So a night of sharply contrasting polling and as PB threads have shown people seem to opt for the numbers that most fit with their desired outcome That’s inevitable.
What we are seeing are the products of different methodologies and I’ve have points to pick with all of them.
My problem with the latest batch is that a large part of the fieldwork period covered Monday when the news was dominated by the Labour manifesto launch. As we see so often during the conference season the party that’s getting most coverage tends to get a boost.
This artificial manifesto launch period will end with the Lib Dems today and from Thursday there will be broadly equal time allocated to all three parties in the radio and TV coverage .
One big trend that’s common is that “others” – UKIP/GRN/BNP – are, as expected, getting squeezed as the media concentrates on the main players.
The PB/Angus Reid data is available here and includes a breakdown for the subset of LAB-CON marginals where the swing is 9% compared with 6.5% overall.
How will it all look after the first debate – we don’t have long to wait.