Ipsos-MORI MORI has concern about it dropping to a 9 year low On a day when the big political story has been Dave’s immigration speech and the attack upon it from Vince one of my favourite monthly polls is just out – the Ipsos-MORI issues index which has been asked in the same form for more than three decades. In the latest poll just 17% of those taking part said “race relations/immigration” – a drop of nine points since March…
Did previous questions influence the referendum finding? There’s a new AV poll from YouGov just out that was commissioned by the Institute for Public Policy Research and has findings that are very different from other recent surveys from the online pollster. After re-percentaging so that only decided voters are included the survey found YES ahead by 58% to 42% – a lead of sixteen points. This compares with the most recent YouGov AV poll that has NO 8% ahead. What…
What’s behind the shift? There’s been a sharp move to NO reported from YouGov and it’s all happened in the space of four days. At the weekend the Sunday Times survey from the firm had the YES campaign with a two point leader amongst decided voters. Today’s SUN is now reporting that the latest poll, where fieldwork closed yesterday afternoon, has NO eight points ahead. This is the first time that News International’s pollster has had NO ahead when the…
Could the real argument start AFTER May 5th? With one poll after another showing the referendum race as neck and neck there becomes a real possibility that we could see the overall UK result being a YES but with England going NO. The reasons have been discussed here before. The referendum coincides with general elections to the devolved parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland with turnout, perhaps into the 60s. In England there are either local council elections or,…
Will 1,000+ gains justify the poll ratings? It’s always the case ahead of the May local elections that parties seek to lower expectations in order that they can better them and so declare their performances a great success. That’s politics and we are seeing a bout of it at the moment. So it’s no wonder that Labour is trying to dampen down forecasts that the party is in for a brilliant night on May 5th. The most they’ll admit is…
Could this affect the locals on May 5th? Yesterday we looked at the latest finding in the “cuts blame game” and reported that YouGov was still showing a big deficit for Labour with 40% saying the last government was to blame for the spending cuts. There’s another tracker that YouGov has which is focussed on council spending cuts where a different picture is emerging. The question is: “Local councils in many parts of Britain are cutting some of their services….
Are researchers stretching conclusions too far? There’s an academic report out that suggests that devices such as the “Worm”, seen in some of the broadcasts of last April’s leaders’ TV debates, could influence the views of voters and possibly change an electoral outcome. Professor Jeff Bowers of Bristol University and Professor Colin Davis, from Royal Holloway, carried out their study by manipulating a worm and superimposing it on a live broadcast of the final election debate in Bristol. Two groups…
The above charts show two sets of data with the referendum voting intentions of decided voters from the latest YouGov poll. The first shows how the referendum is being viewed by different age groups and illustrates the heavy reliance of YES voters in the younger age groups who are, of course, less likely to vote. It should be noted that YouGov did ask a voting certainty question and the splits reflect that. Our second chart shows the regional splits with…