Why is this one so late in being published? It's a week old.

— JWExTheSpa (@SpaJw) March 17, 2021

Ever since YouGov’s post budget poll showing a 13% Tory lead was published it has been suggested, including by me, that it was possibly an outlier. Other polls have been published in the meantime, one with the lead at just 2% and none of them of them were on the scale of the YouGov survey.

Well this afternoon we’ve got the follow-up poll from the firm and experienced poll watchers, like in the Tweets above, are highlighting the fieldwork date – this reflected opinion a week ago.

The other published polls that were carried out after the YouGov had the following CON leads:

• Redfiield & Willson 7%
• Savanta/ComRes 2%
• Opinium 6%
• Ipsos 7%

If Savanta has this one right then that would point to the Tories losing their majority.

Statistically the nature of polling is going to produce outliers maybe 5% of the time. Indeed one leading US poll watcher used to question the veracity of pollsters who never had outliers.

We wait for the next published YouGov.