Why the big differences in tonight’s polls?
YouGov/News International – CON 37%, LAB 42%, LD 9%
ICM/Guardian – CON 37%, LAB 36%, LD 16%
Populus/Times – CON 34%, LAB 39%, LD 11%
It’s not often outside election periods that we get three polls in one evening all from established pollsters. That’s happened tonight and we see a big variation particularly between ICM and YouGov.
I’ll be doing a more detailed post ionce we have the detailed data but a lot of the variation is down to methodology. ICM operates in one way, Populus in another while YouGov has its own bespoke approach including its controversial weighting by newspapers read.
In tonight’s YouGov survey the view of one Daily Mirror/Record reader was worth the equivalent of 5.06 Guardian/Indy readers. With the Express/Mail segment the views of Mirror readers were “valued” at 3.2 times the former.
No doubt Lib Dems will favour ICM while Labour supporters prefer YouGov. Interestingly the former has not had Labour in the 40s in any poll since the general election while the latter has had the party above that threshold in all but one of in excess of 120 surveys since December.