Five new polls reported tonight – and it’s still resoundingly good news for the Lib Dems with the surge holding steady:
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YouGov in the Sun … CON 33(+1), LAB 27%(+1), LIB DEM 31%(-2)
Opinium in the Express … CON 32%(-7), LAB 26%(-5), LIB DEM 29%(+12)
ComRes for the Independent/ITV … CON 32%(+1), LAB 28%(+1), LIB DEM 28%(-1)
Angus Reid for PoliticalBetting.com … CON 32%(-6), LAB 24%(-4), LIB DEM 32%(+10)
ICM in the Guardian … CON 33%(-1), LAB 28%(-1), LIB DEM 30%(+3)
Anthony Wells’ UK Polling Report ‘poll of polls’ is still playing catch-up with the last five days’ quite extraordinary polls, and is showing the following scores:
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CON 34%, LAB 28%, LIB DEM 27%
PoliticsHome.com has the regional breakdown from its YouGov survey of 10,000 households conducted over the last week. These show the Lib Dems making gains across the country, but especially in the North West and the East of England. It also shows the party has advanced or maintained its position in every region of the UK compared with 2005, except Scotland or Wales. Full figures available here.
Prize for most optimistic wet-finger-in-the-air post of the day: The Spectator’s James Forsyth’s The growing sense that the worst is behind the Tories.
James tries to prove the first myth rule of journalism that reality is shaped by what you write, rather than the other way around. I just love the understatement here: “no one would pretend that [these polls] are what the Tories would like to see right now. … But they are not as bad as some feared they might be”.
Prize for biggest failure to understand how politics works post of the day: BBC Newsnight’s Michael Crick’s Are Lib Dems failing to take advantage of surge?
Yes, Michael, because obviously what the Lib Dems should do on the basis of four days’ good polling is ditch its key seats strategy and instead cross its fingers and pour money into non-target seats. Michael Crick’s feigned naivety about how politics works is always tedious, never more so than at election time.
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11 Comments
Let us be very careful and look at the facts. The Sun newspaper is owned by Murdoch. They are trying to set us up for a fall. UGOV have been fed questions to be asked by the Sun. Galvin Mckenzie on Sky last night discribed Nick Clegg as an ass licking politician licking the ass of Europe. We all know that this man worked for the sun. On thursday Adam Boulton is going to run the Sky debate. He found the remark made by Mckenzie amusing.
Can we really have a fair chance with SKY?
Come on Nick show them what you really can do.
Who would have thought it ….31st March… Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg could be the surprise winner of the UK’s general election, former US presidential candidate Howard Dean has said.
Mr Dean praised Mr Clegg as a “young, dynamic leader”. And he said he could be the big winner from Britain’s first televised election debates, capitalising on disillusion with the two larger parties.
“Let us be very careful and look at the facts. The Sun newspaper is owned by Murdoch. They are trying to set us up for a fall. UGOV have been fed questions to be asked by the Sun.”
Let’s indeed be careful and look at the facts.
An anonymous poster on the Political Betting website claimed that he had been asked questions about Lib Dem policy before indicating his voting intention during a YouGov survey – the Sunday daily tracker for the Sun, he believed. He quoted what purported to be one of these “questions”, which was composed in semi-literate English and contained actionable statements about the party (and which wasn’t actually a question at all).
On this basis, and on this basis alone, Craig Murray on his blog accused the Sun of paying YouGov to produce a poll which deliberately minimised Lib Dem support by subjecting interviewees to anti-Lib-Dem propanganda before asking their voting intention. Murray commented that this action on YouGov’s part “abrogates all professional methodology and breaches the ethics of the polling industry”, and said that the senior management of YouGov must resign.
On Anthony Wells’s UK Polling Report blog, another contributor asked about “the anti-L-D questions asked before the voting intention question in the latest YouGov for the Sun/Times”. Wells commented that this allegation wasn’t true at all, and said that the questions referred to were not “anything to do with polling for newspapers or publication”, and that in any case they had been asked after the voting intention question.
Murray then edited his blog post to add a grossly misleading summary of Wells’s response, including the claim that Wells had said the voting intention question ought to have been asked first (Wells actually said it had been asked first, “as it should have been”). Murray omitted the statement that the questions was not part of a newspaper survey, including only the description of them as “Not for publication”, which made it sound as though they were part of the Sun survey, but had been deliberately suppressed in the report of it.
In short, Murray completely misrepresented Wells’s response to make it appear that he had admitted Murray’s claims were true, whereas in fact he had made it quite clear that the questions were not part of the Sun poll, and that in any case they had been asked after the voting intention question.
Then Stephen Tall repeated part of the allegations on this site, under the title “Are YouGov and Murdoch ‘push-polling’ for the Tories?”, saying “it looks like Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper has been paying internet polling firm YouGov to undertake some push-polling against the Lib Dems”. That was despite the fact that he had evidently read Anthony Wells’s denial that the questions were anything to do with a newspaper survey. And Tall linked to Murray’s blog without commenting that Wells had also denied his allegation that the questions were intended to influence voting intention in the Sun poll.
Finally, the Guardian made an article out of these various blogs and blog comments, quoting the original comment from the Political Betting site that purported to give the “question” YouGov had asked, but doctoring it so that it wasn’t quite so illiterate – presumably so that it wasn’t quite so implausible that YouGov could have asked such a question. The unconfirmed comment by an anonymous poster on a blog was presented as a statement made by YouGov and “leaked on the Internet”.
In summary:
(1) Craig Murray’s allegation that this was a conspiracy between the Sun and YouGov to produce a misleading poll by subjecting the respondents to anti-Lib-Dem propaganda before asking their voting intention has been firmly denied by YouGov.
(2) It appears that questions were asked about Lib Dem policy in a separate YouGov survey commissioned by someone other than the Sun, with the intention of evaluating the effectiveness of different lines of attack on that policy, but:
(i) our only source for the wording of the questions is an anonymous comment on a blog, and it has to be asked how believable it is that YouGov would have been so reckless as to send out slanderous questions about the Lib Dems to a large number of random recipients, and
(ii) this is surely not “push-polling” in the sense that has been discussed – of trying to influence the electorate by exposing large numbers of them to misleading statements. A modicum of common sense tells us that it’s far more likely to be a rival party commissioning YouGov to try out its tactics on a random sample to evaluate their effectiveness. Isn’t this what political parties do all the time? Isn’t it what the Lib Dems would and should be doing, if they have the resources?
If the Sun are trying to fix the poll to knock us back they are not succeeding very well.
Tony Greaves
The surge wasn’t caused by the newspapers and won’t be stopped by them.
It is likely fewer people will watch the 2nd debate as a) they don’t have SKY and b) Foreign affairs is not a big vote winner.
Add in Dave having to explain why the Tories took the UK in the the ERM, why they voted for war in Iraq, how they can change the EU when they have no worthwhile allies in Europe. the impact will be far less than the first debate.
I think that the first debate was an “the emperor has no clothes” moment for the Conservatives.
The biggest increase in support in a GE followed by the biggest drop ? Not very likely is it. The chances of net Tory gains form Lib Dems must have vanished.
As a result of the poll surge since April 15th my understanding is that we are now firmly in shared power territory, if the momentum holds on May 6th.
This new poll surge can only mean that the Liberal Democrat change supported by the people, will produce a fairer Britain with Nick Clegg and Vince Cable at the helm of new Government.
There is no reason at all why Nick Clegg`s star cannot continue to rise into the ascendant again, post International and Economy TV Debates, as this wider canvass for support is anchored on a more honest approach to politics.
It will open the door to a Britain that is a fairer place to live and work and will herald a more honest approach to Government.It also will mean a sharp move in the direction of a cleaner politics and a place where for the worst off to be the main beneficiaries from tax reform.
Clegg has the Obama touch and British people now are saying on the doorstep that they like our our man best and his policies on behalf of a fair and a more rebalanced British Economy.
Anthony Aloysius St – the “dodgy” questions weren’t only aimed at the Lib Dems, however – there were some targetted at the SNP too. This was picked up by “Oldnat”, one of the more reasonable SNP “cybernats” who regularly post on sites like Politics Home and Brian Taylor’s BBC blog.
The key thing is that Oldnat’s contact was insistent that the “pushpolling” questions came before the questions on voting intention, which is really the key point as it will inevitably influence the outcome of the poll.
Anthony – the two key questions for YouGov are these: (1) did they repeat allegations against the Lib Dems which are factually incorrect? That would be a breach of Market Research Society rules. (2) if yes, who commissioned them to do so. LDV has put the first question to YouGov, and await their response
Polite reminder: we already have two threads on the YouGov ‘push-polling’ story and LDV reserves the right to remove off-topic comments.
KL
“The key thing is that Oldnat’s contact was insistent that the “pushpolling” questions came before the questions on voting intention …”
Where have you seen this? I have just checked Oldnat’s comments about this on Anthony Wells’s blog, and I can’t see any such suggestion.
In fact, Oldnat said “Anthony’s report on the YouGov site is what I quoted.”
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/?p=2611&cp=all#comments
As you can see, in that report, the questions about voting intention are the first ones asked:
http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-ST-results-17.04.pdf
Stephen
Regarding your remark about off-topic comments, as you can see, I was responding to the first comment on the thread, which raised this question. Just as you and KL have responded to my comment, in fact. But perhaps you are just trying to have the last word?
You say now that the issue is whether YouGov has made factually incorrect statements about the Lib Dems. I hope that means you have dropped your earlier allegations that they appear to have been “push-polling” on behalf of the Sun. No doubt you have now read the explanation of the difference between “push-polling” and message testing by Stephan Shakespeare, the CEO of YouGov:
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2010/04/the-shakespeare-report-message-testing-v-push-polling.html
As to whetherYouGov have been putting out “factually incorrect” statements about the Lib Dems (“defamatory” was your original claim), I’d say that was pretty unlikely. Certainly it’s not an allegation that should be made on the unsupported evidence of an anonymous comment on a political blog. But it’s good that you’ve finally contacted YouGov directly to ask them.
Classic comment on Crick’s post from Derbyexile: “Talk about 20:20 hindsight. A week ago Michael would have been writing how mad the Libs were if they had been targeting Bournemouth West rather than defending seats like Mid-Dorset which were under threat from the pro-Tory swing since 2005. The Libs may not be a super tanker but it takes more than 72 hours to switch resourcing priorities PLUS it is still uncertain how lasting the Clegg bounce is going to be. Let’s try a little more insightful commentary and analysis shall we?”