Well at least they couldn’t be accused of clustering

With the Tory leadership race taking place and the unique situation where party members will be electing a new PM there’s increasing focus on the polls and the possibility that the new leader could seek to call a general election.

One thing I’ve been meaning to do since the May 23rd Euros is to record here how the pollsters did in their final surveys compared with the actual result. This is something that we usually do on PB after elections but other issues since the Euro results came out have rather dominated the UK political narrative.

Remember when looking at this list that almost all polling that we see in on a GB only basis. Northern Ireland has its own very different political structure and there there is little point including the province in national polls. The Wikipedia table above shows that distinction.

What’s clear is that most firms struggled in this complex multi-party election with a lowish turnout. Labour which had a GB share of 14.1% was given final poll ratings from 15% (Ipsos-MORI) to 24% (Kantar) and 25% (Panelbase).

The LDs who came out with a GB share of 20.3% were given final poll ratings ranging from 20% (Ipsos-MORI) to 12% (Survation). No firm overstated the party and all but Ipsos understated them.

The Tories had a polling range of 7-15% and came out with 9/1%

Farage’s Brexit party, founded in November 2018 and not a few weeks before hand they kept on claiming, was both understated and overstated  and we see a range of 27% (Kantar) to 38% (Opinium).

For all the firms this was a very challenging election because of turnout. Overall this was 37% compared with the near 70% that we expect at general elections.

 NOTE: I’m off to London for a hustings meeting in that other leadership contest – the successor to Vince Cable with the Liberal Democrats and probably won’t be posting here until the evening. The two contenders, Jo Swinson and Ed Davey, were both ministers during the coalition.

Mike Smithson

Follow @MSmithsonPB

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