Very high levels of don’t knows amongst 2010 voters in Times Populus Eastleigh poll suggest that battle is still wide open

Very high levels of don’t knows amongst 2010 voters in Times Populus Eastleigh poll suggest that battle is still wide open

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The only real certainty is that Labour is out of it

Overnight I’ve been fortunate to have be given the dataset from today’s Populus Eastleigh poll for the Times and the big message is that this battle is far tighter than the 5% Lib Dem lead might suggest.

    Very significant numbers of 2010 voters for the three main parties, 30% or more in each case, are still saying they don’t know or refused to give a voting choice.

What they decide to do over the coming five days could be decisive. Only Labour now looks out of it.

The big mover in the first fortnight of the campaign has been Ukip who have been picking up support from 2010 LAB and LD voters as well as from CON ones. The breakdown shows that 17% of Tories from 2010, 10% of Labour voters and 11% of LDs all now say they are voting for the purples.

One feature from the polling is that far more of those sampled said they voted for Chris Huhne at the last election than actually did do which means, with past voting weighting, that their responses have had to be scaled back sharply.

This could be down to “misremembering” or sampling issues. Whatever it adds an extra uncertainty.

I am really hoping that we might see more polling in Sundays – that should make it clearer.

Mike Smithson

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