Well done to the main phone pollsters for now reporting England only numbers
With Scotland’s politics now operating in a very different pattern to the rest of the country I have being lobbying the main telephone posters to issue England only data with their main voting intention polls.
The result is that for December we now have a full range of England phone poll data which I have reproduced in the 2 charts above.
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What is very striking is the very considerable difference between Ipsos-MORI and the 3 other phone posters.
Quite why this should be is not easy to discern. The main difference between Ipsos MORI and the others is that the former does not have any form of past vote weightings – a subject that we have dwelt upon many times before. Also Ipsos-MORI shows only those certain to vote in its headline numbers.
The reason why England is so important is that the Conservatives made more than 90 gains in England at the last general election. Many of those are now ultra marginal seats which are vulnerable to Labour moving forward.
The effect of taking Scotland out of the polling figures is that we see a much greater swing to Labour and we see higher UKIP shares. Look at the 23% from Lord Ashcrfot.
Betfair has introduced a new general election market relating to England only. I find it very difficult to see how the Conservatives can win most seats in this part of the UK.