Why you should be wary of surveys taken during long weekends With so much going on the political front there are almost certain to be opinion surveys carried out this weekend. If they are then treat them with extra caution because they might be subject to the bank holiday effect. Many will remember the famous Populus tracker poll that was published on the day before the General Election last year and showed Labour on 41%, the Tories on 27% with…
Introducing PB.C monitoring on poll sample distortion Here’s a statistic that everybody interested in political opinion polls should take into account: If you make a completely random unsolicited phone call and manage to persuade the person answering to tell you how they voted in the General Election there’s a 44.7% chance that it will be Labour. This compares, of course, with the 36.2% of voters who did actually vote for the party last May – so the proportion telling pollsters…
Tories up 2 – Labour down 2 – LDs no change With the David Cameron set to make his first Tory conference speech since his election as leader there’s news of a recovery in the party’s position from ICM – the UK’s leading telephone pollster. The last time ICM reported, in the Sunday Telegraph a fortnight ago, the party was down at the General Election level of 33% four points behind Labour. The latest numbers are:- CON 35%(+2): LAB 35%(-2):…
Is Francis Maude right – the problem’s the party not the leader? One of the most quoted pieces of research from the 2005 General Election was that the public public view of a particular policy dropped considerably when those interviewed were told that this is what the Tories wanted. In an echo of that this morning in Guardian the Tory Chairman, Francis Maude says that the public are still unpersuaded by his party but asserts they they have taken to…
Labour back into the lead & party supporters want him to stay This month’s poll from Populus in the Times, puts Labour back into the lead for the first time since January. Its shares are with comparisons on last month CON 34%(-1): LAB 36%(+1): LD 21%(+1) – so a two point fall-off in the Tory position has seen one point jumps for Labour and the Lib Dems. This is in line with other recent polls which have seen the Tory…
But the attacks on Gordon Brown appear to be hitting home In the first voting intention survey by any pollster since Gordon Brown’s budget nine days ago YouGov’s March survey for the Daily Telegraph has Cameron’s Conservatives and Labour level pegging with the Lib Dems down one point. The shares are with changes on the last YouGov poll twelve days ago are CON 36 (-2): LAB 36 (+1): LD 18 (-1). Note that the comparisons are with the last YouGov…
The bad headlines are barely having an impact Even though he is under the most intensive media pressure the detailed numbers, just out, from Sunday’s YouGov poll show that those planning to vote Labour are overwhelmingly loyal to the triple General Election winner Tony Blair. A total of 85% think Tony Blair is doing well in the job – only two points below the way Tory supporters are rating David Cameron. The Labour supporters disagree by 41-34 with the suggestion…
.. YouGov has Labour 3% behind while ICM shows a 4% lead In much of the period leading up to the 2005 General Election the UK’s two major polling organisations were showing very different pictures of the way the public were thinking. Alas by polling day findings from the two firms almost converged and it was hard to draw a significant conclusion about their respective methodologies. Today a telephone survey by ICM in the SundayTelegraph has LAB 37: CON 33:…