Nighthawks is open

Nighthawks is open

Home of the web’s best political conversation Why not relax, and converse into the night on the day’s events in PB NightHawks. If you’re a lurker, why not delurk, Right Now, It’s Ok to delurk, delurking will make you feel Whole Again. The round up of recent events (click on the links below, and it will bring up the relevant link) Are things really looking that bad for the Lib Dems? Nick Clegg aims to show emotional side in second…

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The ComRes “East of England” poll that isn’t quite what the BBC reported it to be

The ComRes “East of England” poll that isn’t quite what the BBC reported it to be

How BBC East reported a sub-set of 58 people from a 3 wk old ComRes EU2014 poll The party %ages add up to 112 pic.twitter.com/t6vVQkP8Tg — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) April 1, 2014 There’s been a huge fuss over the past couple of hours over a ComRes a EP2014 “poll” that has UKIP on 44% in their area of greatest strength, East of England. The above is a screenshot showing the data was portrayed in the “Look East” programme. Only problem is…

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Tories the main winner, UKIP the main loser in the March 2014 Populus monthly aggregate – sample size 16k

Tories the main winner, UKIP the main loser in the March 2014 Populus monthly aggregate – sample size 16k

LAB share down on the month but only by 0.5% Today sees the second of what looks set to be a great resource right through until the general election – the Populus/FT monthly aggregate based on all the firm’s twice-weekly surveys with an overall sample size of more more than 16k. Having a sample on that scale means that the cross-tabs are more meaningful with much smaller margins of errors than we get with individual polls. Thus two key pointers…

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PB Nighthawks is now open

PB Nighthawks is now open

Home of the web’s best political conversation Why not relax, and converse into the night on the day’s events in PB NightHawks. If you’re looking for a round up of recent political news, then I’m Your Man, if you’re a lurker, why not delurk? Lurking means your on the Edge of Heaven that is posting on PB. The round up of recent events (click on the links below, and it will bring up the relevant link) End of the Boris…

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The Ashcroft polling that could most worry the Tories

The Ashcroft polling that could most worry the Tories

There’s a big expectation that by the time we get to GE2015 many of those ex-CON voters now saying UKIP will, when push comes to shove, return to the blue fold. I buy into that. We see in weekly round of local by-elections that the purples are chalking up big vote shares in wards where they don’t impact on the outcome, notably though not exclusively, in LAB heartlands. Last Thursday, for instance, they achieved 28% in Sunderland. But looking at…

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Getting on for a third of all votes at GE2015 could be tactical: Not FOR a party but AGAINST another one

Getting on for a third of all votes at GE2015 could be tactical: Not FOR a party but AGAINST another one

CON has most positive votes and the fewest tactical ones The chart above is based on the finding new form of questioning which has just been tested by Opinium for its latest Observer poll. After the main voting intention question the firm asked “You said that you would vote [Party] if an election were held tomorrow. Would you say that this is because you’d want to vote for [Party] or because you’d want to vote against someone else?” For those…

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For the fifth month in succession the projected LAB majority from Electoral Calculus sees a decline

For the fifth month in succession the projected LAB majority from Electoral Calculus sees a decline

The March projection from Electoral Calculus is for LAB majority of 40 pic.twitter.com/cX2NETOxN5 — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) March 30, 2014 At the start of 2014 it was 78 seats Martin Baxter, the City mathematician who has been running Electoral Calculus for nearly two decades, has put out his latest monthly projection and once again there is a decline in the projected LAB majority. Martin computes the figure by applying his own polling average to his Commons Seats calculator. Inevitably the…

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Today’s YouGov has CON down to 33 and LAB at 40: Could be an outlier or a sign that the budget effect is receding

Today’s YouGov has CON down to 33 and LAB at 40: Could be an outlier or a sign that the budget effect is receding

After a whole spate of post-Budget polls showing the LAB share declining and the gap getting close today’s YouGov for the Sunday Times comes as something of a shock. Is it an outlier or are we seeing the Budget effect starting to fade away? That is always hard to say and all we can do is wait to see some more polling. The fieldwork for today’s poll was later than the latest Opinium or Populus polls which both had the…

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