Worcester's Weblog

MORI chairman Sir Robert Worcester analyses the latest opinion poll data.

YouGov, the internet polling company which is proposing to float on the AIM just after the election, must be worrying even more than most of the other pollsters, for they have more riding on getting it right than just their reputation.

The price at which they float may be affected by the degree to which their enviable record in this country for 'getting it right' in general elections is supported by their performance on May 5.

Or, will it be another 'way out' performance as it was in the American elections. Of 17 polls published on the last two days of the American election, 15 were within plus or minus three percent; the only two outside the normally accepted 'margin of error' were YouGov and the other internet pollsters Harris International, while the 15 who 'got it right' were polling on the telephone.

YouGov has published three polls these past few days.

The first was for Sky among 1,735 electors from their internet panel on April 5, and the second for the Telegraph from 5,191 people on the 5th and 6th.

Question: were the people who filled out Sky's questionnaire on the 5th included in the nearly 5,200 people interviewed over the 5th and 6th?

The former's voting intention was 36 per cent Tory, 36 per cent Labour and 21 per cent Liberal Democrats, while the latter was 35 per cent, 36 per cent and 21 per cent respectively.

Remarkable coincidence if they were totally independent, but then as they were both drawn from the same 17,000 base, and weighted by demographically and by newspaper readership and then by the voting intentions of the baseline group, random variation might have smoothed out differences in voting intention by the weighting.

On Tuesday, four polls showed a narrowing of the race, three with a 3.5 per cent swing to the Conservatives and one a swing of one per cent.

YouGov was the exception, as their poll on March 19 in the Sunday Times was 32 per cent Tory, 37 per cent Labour and 23 per cent Lib Dem -- a five point Labour lead -- but the 17,000 base line, in the Telegraph on March 24, reported 34 per cent, 35 per cent and 22 per cent shares, a one point lead on a two per cent swing from Tory to Labour.

Since then, both the latest set of findings have been either 36 per cent or 35 per cent for both Conservatives and Labour, and both had the Lib Dems at 21 per cent. That must be putting the frighteners into Labour abstainers.

Their third poll was for the Spectator, asking a series of questions prefaced by the words 'Can you tell me' e.g. the name of the prime minister. Luckily few pedants took part, for the logical answer to all these questions must be either 'yes' or 'no'.