The numbers that the pollsters hope will help restore faith in their industry
For the past year it has not been much fun being a political pollster. Whenever any new survey has been published it has been greeted with “Well we all know what happened at the General Election”.
So today’s elections where there’s been polling, the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and most of all London could play a big part in the renewing faith in what they do.
The reason this might sound London-centric is because the General Election Scottish polling was, in the main, pretty good and only one firm, YouGov, does regular Welsh polls. In the two national regions, as well, there is the complication of the list voting system on top of those for individual members of the national parliaments.
Of course there are a large range of contenders fighting for the capital’s mayoralty but voters do have what is known as a “supplementary vote” so this is a sort of AV system.
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If there is a Zac victory or the Khan lead is in low single figures then the doubts over polling will remain – something that’s particularly important in the count down to the June 23rd referendum.
In the list above I have only included those where fieldwork took place during the final week. All the surveys are online.