Charting the Populus “Monday effect” – the day the LAB lead is generally up on the previous Friday
General elections are on Thursday – so good for CON?
For a year now Populus has been issuing two online polls a week – on Monday where the fieldwork has taken place over the weekend and on a Friday when responses were from mid-week.
Last week YouGov’s Anthony Wells who runs UKPR crunched the data from the 100 or so Populus online polls that there have been and found an average LAB lead of 3.1% of Friday and a 3.8% one on Mondays.
As the chart shows in recent weeks the gap between the two days has got wider
I don’t have an explanation but if. indeed, those polled are more predisposed to CON mid-week than at the weekend then I’d suggest that it is good for the Tories that GE2015 is, as per usual, on a Thursday.
Today’s Populus poll.
Latest Populus VI following usual trend for Mondays of being better for LAB. Friday polls worse
Lab 37 (=)
Con 33 (-2)
LD 9 (=)
UKIP 12 (+3)
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 28, 2014
UPDATE: Today’s Ashcroft national poll
This week's @LordAshcroft national poll (last week's shares)
CON 32 (27)
LAB 34 (35)
LD 9 (7)
Ukip 14 (17)
GRN 6 (7)
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 28, 2014