Without rehearsing the discussions on PB on why some of us prefer phone pollsters, in recent days, a few posters have asked me to revive the PB polling average.

I’ve slightly modified from what happened in the past.

What I’ve done is average the monthly phone polls from January this year, month by month, since ending of Populus’ contract with the Times, we only have three regular monthly phone polls, The ICM for The Guardian, Ipsos-Mori’s regular political monitor, and ComRes’ phone poll for the Independent.

First up, how the each party averages, month by month, by party, on the UKIP tab, we can see since January they’ve nearly doubled from 8.33% to 16%, Labour have fallen from 40% to 34%, the Tories down 2% from 31.67% to 29.67%, whilst the Lib Dems down are down a mere 0.67% in the same period.

Then, Monthly averages comparison

 

Finally how the parties’ averages have changed since January.

It is clear the big winner has been UKIP, up on average 7.67% since January.

Interestingly the big loser is Labour, whose average has fallen by 6% since January (8% since February), the Tories are on average down 2% in the same period, consequently, Labour’s lead over the Tories has fallen from an average 8.33% in Janaury, to 4.33% in May.

Overall, both the major parties will be alarmed, The Tories are consistently polling near their core vote level, Labour will be alarmed to be shedding quite so many votes, and the fact they aren’t the repository of the mid term protest vote in the way UKIP are. The Lib Dems will be relieved that they’ve not lost any more support, whilst UKIP will be delighted.

I will do a similar thread for the online pollsters, on Sunday, when all the onlinee polls conducted in May have been published.

 

TSE

Note: Mike Smithson is currently on holiday