A Populus CON lead perhaps would speak volumes

Mark Pack makes an excellent point that if you look at movements pollster by pollster then there has actually been very little volatility.

This is one of the basic rules of polling analysis – you shouldn’t compare one firm’s poll with another and then deduce that there has been a trend.

In the run up to this election Monday and Friday morning’s, as we saw again yesterday, have generally brought reassuring news for LAB with the twice-weekly Populus/FT poll. Throughout 2015 it has not shown a CON lead and has had LAB ahead by 1-3% in all but one survey. Monday afternoons, again like yesterday, have been good for the Tories with the ICM and Ashcroft phone polls generally showing solid Tory leads.

The monthly Ipsos-MORI phone poll has during the year tended be good for LAB with the party always ahead. ComRes phone, now in the Mail, has tended to show solid Tory leads.

YouGov can move about though in recent weeks there have been few Tory leads such as we have seen overnight.

What I’d love to see in this final period is for pollsters to produce numbers that are out of character. Populus showing CON leads in its remaining surveys would send out a stronger message about what’s happened than ICM having similar results.

I am expecting a level of convergence as we get closer and that the final polls will have most of them in the same territory.

Meanwhile the decline of UKIP in the latest Ashcroft marginals polling was good news for LAB and CON. The Tories are delighted that Castle Point and Great Yarmouth look safe though they’ll be less pleased by the 6.5% swing to LAB in Cannock Chase that points to a LAB gain. Great Grimsby, regarded as the best LAB target for UKIP had the purples 17% behind.

Mike Smithson

2004-2014: The view from OUTSIDE the Westminster bubble

Follow @MSmithsonPB