What will the next YouGov poll show? The betting markets had this one right yesterday. Late on Saturday morning there was a big move back to Boris in the London Mayoral betting and there was speculation here that someone had got wind of some new polling. The Ipsos-MORI firm, which was showing 2% leads for Ken in the previous two of its polls to be published, is now reporting in the Observer that the Tory is 2% ahead amongst those…
Cameron’s party hits 44% – the highest since the Thatcher years A new YouGov poll for tomorrow’s Sunday Times puts the Tories at 44% the second highest share in any poll since the Thatcher years. The headline with figures the changes on the last survey from the pollster a fortnight ago are:- CON 44%(+1),: LAB 28%(-1): LD 17%(nc). This poll equals that which Tony Blair got in his landslide victory in May 1997 and the margin is in excess of…
Why the change in Boris and Ken prices? There’s been a sharp move to Boris during the past hour in the London Mayoral race betting. As at 12.25pm he was at 1.51 which he was last at before the Unison-sponsored Ipsos-MORI poll in Wednesday morning. A couple of people have emailed me to say that the Observer is carrying a poll tomorrow and the paper’s normal pollster is Ipsos-MORI. I don’t know the truth of this but have been following…
Making sense of the different predictions Firstly a declaration of financial interest: As I reported on Wednesday I was underwhelmed by Boris in the Tuesday Newsnight debate and closed almost all my positions on him for the London mayoralty by 9am of that day, pocketed nearly £1000 from my spread bets, booked a holiday, and took out all the stake money I had on him with Betfair. The balance of my trading profits on the latter is split between Boris…
…. Who do you believe? YouGov, ICM or MORI? Ladbrokes have just added to the range of betting options on the London Mayoral race with markets on the vote shares that both Ken and Boris manage to end up with. Given the very different evidence from the opinion polls you might as well be betting on YouGov vs ICM/MORI. The former is showing the Tory with a 13% lead while the latter have a completely different picture. Remember this is…
The data shows that there were only four votes in it The full detail from today’s MORI London poll is just out and the top-line split is much tighter than the 51%-49% Ken-Boris headline figures that have been reported. Look at the table above and you will see how close it is. Taking those “certain to vote” – the pollster’s standard filter, of first and qualifying second preferences and you find 207 for Ken against 203 for Boris. This works…
A trade union sponsored poll out this morning from Ipsos-MORI on the London Mayoralty put Ken Livingstone in the lead and add further to the polling confusion over the race. Amongst first choices the split amongst those “certain to vote” is JOHNSON 40%: LIVINGSTONE 41%: PADDICK 10% 14%. This is very similar to a survey by the pollster in February which had been commissioned by the Labour party. If you include all those naming a choice Ken had an 8%…
So is it a workable Tory majority or a hung parliament? Since the budget there have been eight general election opinion polls – three from ICM, two from YouGov and one each from the other pollsters that do regular monthly surveys – MORI, ComRes and Populus. What’s interesting is that the big Tory surge that’s both affecting the betting markets and the political climate generally has been based primarily on two pollsters, ICM and YouGov – the firms, incidentally, that…