No clear winner in tonight’s polls

Two polls are out tonight, the daily YouGov one for The Sun and one from Harris for Metro, report opposing movements in the Tory lead.

Harris has a 10% margin, up three points on their last poll a little over a week ago, whereas YouGov has the lead drifting down a point from seven to six since yesterday.  That’s not necessarily contradictory because of the differing time periods and relatively small movements.

David Herdson

And others drop sharply as well

With the election only days away from being called there’s a boost for the Lib Dems in the latest PB/Angus Reid poll.

The entire field-work took place yesterday and today and so was completed after Monday’s Channel 4 “Ask the Chancellors” debate.

A big feature in this latest poll is a sharp decline in the proportion going to others. This follows a period when AR was recording the biggest shares – that is now down to one of the lowest.

Labour also move up to their highest recorded level since AR started their UK polls last October.

In the run-up to the election AR have made a change to their geographical sampling approach. This is how they describe it:-

“……we believe that one of the most important ingredients of success in online polls is rigorous geographic sampling. This means not simply ensuring we have the appropriate number of respondents in a broad region, like London, but that we the right number of people in each part of London from Tower Hamlets to Croydon. In order to achieve that we have divided the 632 constituencies in Great Britain into 142 “Super Constituencies.”

Each of these “Super Constituencies” is made up of about four or five constituencies grouped together based on a combination of geography, demographics, income and political leaning. This approach means that no micro-political culture is missed, leading to more accurate results.”

This is how AR use operate their campaign polls in Canada where the firm has had great success.

I’ll update this post with the link to the detailed data when that becomes available later tonight.

Mike Smithson

Update (2045): Andy from Angus Reid has confirmed that the figures originally released hadn’t been fully adjusted.  The correct figures are now in the table.  David Herdson

The PB guide to fiddling simple on-line polls

How to vote as often as you want

This is not rocket-science and many PBers will know this already but I thought a guide to how to fix simple online polls might be timely.

No doubt we’ll see a deluge of them in the next few weeks and the more people know how they can be fiddled the less notice that will be taken of them.

It really is quite simple. The most insecure polls simply leave a cookie on your browser when you have voted. If you can delete that then you can vote again and again and………………….

The browser featured is Firefox though you can do this easily using IE, Chrome and Safari. All you do is find out how to delete cookies.

Mike Smithson

Could opinion harden against a hung parliament?

Both the Guardian and Telegraph lead on a civil service plan that would have Mr. Brown remaining at Number 10 in the case of a hung parliament.

As the Guardian puts it: “Under the proposals, which have been drawn up to prevent a constitutional crisis and a run on the pound, parliament may not reconvene for nearly three weeks to allow the prime minister to form a working government with the minority parties. Normally, MPs would sit again in six days..Senior Whitehall sources stressed tonight that Brown could remain prime minister and try to create a working majority even if the Tories were to win most seats.”

Without getting into detail of the constitutional niceties isn’t this going to add to what’s been called the “Hung Parliament paradox” – the more it seems likely the less likely it is to happen?

For the experience of 1992, when the polls had the parties neck and and neck, was a hardening of the Tory vote that gave John Major another five years as PM.

Then, of course, it was the incumbent government that benefited maybe because Major was enjoying a significant lead in the approval ratings over Kinnock. This time could it be the opposition? It might for as we’ve highlighted in recent weeks Mr. Brown still has huge negative approval numbers.

Both YouGov and Ipsos-MORI have this in the low 60s.

The only occasion when a PM won an election with negative numbers like that was Tony Blair in 2005 – but he was facing an opposition leader who was even more unpopular. Currently YouGov have Cameron with a net ten point positive while MORI have this at even.

The Ladbrokes Tory majority price has tightened to 8/13 while NOM is at 13/8. Other bookies are in the same area.

Mike Smithson