General Election year polling opens with LAB having small leads and a big divide over the Greens
The first two polls of 2015 pic.twitter.com/fzK2c1eIFp
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) January 6, 2015
The first two pollsters to report at start of 2010 had CON leads of 9% & 10%. At GE10 CON vote lead was 7.3%
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) January 6, 2015
YouGov now follow Survation & ComRes in prompting for UKIP
So the the general election year polling begins with LAB on small leads from the online pollsters which poll most often, Populus and YouGov.
Not much real difference with the the main parties but YouGov is showing a much bigger Green share,8%, compared with the Populus 4%. It is hard to work out way but YouGov’s Green shares were amongst the highest of the firms at the end of last year.
Meanwhile YouGov has started prompted for UKIP and follows Survation and ComRes. We’ll have to watch over time to see whether this has an impact. The firm’s also introduce some weighting changes which I’ll need to study in detail before commenting on.
It’s worth noting that YouGov opened 2010 polling programme by getting the eventual LAB share dead on. It did overstate the Tories and understate the LDs.