Now they’re down, now they’re up, now they’re…

Following the YouGov/Sunday Times poll that had the Lib Dems falling to 18% yesterday, a Harris/Metro poll today has the Lib Dems up at 25%.

As Mike Smithson reports over on Political Betting, the fieldwork for the Harris poll is actually slightly older, (1st-9th June as opposed to YouGov 10th-11th June).

Rather than telling us anything particularly useful – certainly in terms of the outcome of any future elections – these last two are notable more for the pollsters finally leaving behind a run of six post-election polls all of which had the Lib Dems firmly planted at 21%.

Since one poll has the party 3% down and the other 4% up*, those of a suspicious bent might think not a lot has happened beyond normal statistical variance finally asserting itself, and we can hopefully all get back to the sensible approach pre-campaign of looking at polls in the round every month or so and not bothering about every single one.

* To qualify that, this is the first post-election Harris poll so it’s 4% up compared to the average of the previous polls from all pollsters, not the last Harris poll.