Breakdown from specific seats which each had 1,000 sample

Preferred GE15 outcome in 26 seats from @LordAshcroft latest marginals polling pic.twitter.com/ZnXsgE7dT8

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) June 2, 2014

As we wait for this afternoon’s Newark poll from Lord Ashcroft I thought it worth going back to his massive marginals polling published the weekend before last. Because of the timing, on the Saturday after the local results but before the Euros, it got nothing like the attention it deserved.

This was a shame because of the sheer scale and ambition of the polling and the pointers it gave to GE15. All fieldwork in each of the seats was carried out by phone and there was an overall sample of 26,000. That’s greater than in a year of ICM monthly Guardian polls the Ipsos-MORI political monitors put together.

So the standard criticism of battleground surveys that the sample in each seat is small simply doesn’t apply. This is serious stuff and I for one am grateful to Lord Ashcroft for what he is doing.

I like the questioning featured above because that gives a good pointer of likely tactical voting – so important now that UKIP is taking such a big share.

The seats are the most marginal LAB-CON and CON-LAB plus two, where there’s a big UKIP effort, Thanet S and Great Yarmouth.

Lord Ashcroft’s Newark poll as well as his weekly national phone poll should be out just after 4pm

Mike Smithson

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