We might be back to the European Election scenario where, in that instance, it was the UKIP and LibDems parties who gained at the expense of the others. Both had definite views on Europe: the others did not.

This time the parties dealing most with Local Affairs are the BNP and LIbDems. Having watched the Party Political Broadcasts it was hard to believe that the forthcoming elections are about local affairs.

As you say it’s always unwise to read anything much in a single poll but fwiw when I saw these figures I wondered if the Lib Dem advance was something like their General Election ’surge’ only more so, on the grounds that voters switch to Lib Dems when they think they can win–and that’s more the case in local elections than parliamentary.Of course that means that those polled are actually answering a different question than that asked but it seems quite possible to me that if one had,say, just decided to vote Lib Dem locally one might well put thoughts of a future vote in an election 3-4 years away, out of mind.

It could be to an extent - there are various factors in the Lib Dem poll “boost”, including some, such as tactical considerations, that probably won’t happen outside an election campaign and some, like more tv coverage, that don’t seem to be happening at the moment.

That said, having local lib dems campaigning in council elections could have had an effect on increasing the Lib Dem profile in those areas with local elections.

I think the Libs have benefitted from a ‘not the other parties’ too. Obviously Labour’s problems are manifest, but there seems to have been a conscious decision to turn on David Cameron in the Tory press too.

The gap between the LibDem % in the YouGov and ICM polls is unusually large. Is ICM’s sample more southern or more educated or more middle class than YouGov’s or something else?

Interestingly enough, when you take into account MoE and all that, these numbers aren’t all that different to the General Election result (mind you that goes for most polls over here doesn’t it? Which does sometimes make me wonder how many of the changes trumpeted by the media in the polls they’ve commisioned are just statistical noise). Not a good poll for Labour o/c but not the end of the world either (personally I don’t think *any* party (large or small) deserves to have good poll ratings at the moment. Politics-wise the past few months have been a frustrating joke… nothing but hot air, vicious rumours and “scandals” affecting all parties that most people don’t care about… and then the media and political classes wonder why people can’t be bothered to vote).

Although the cynic in me notes that, yet again, the ICM Gruaniad poll fits in very well with the Gruaniad’s editorial line (as have a suspiciously high number of polls over the past few months). I’m starting to wonder if the Gruaniad writes a headline and gets ICM to make a poll for it… in general the relationship between polling firms and newspapers is far, far too close, and close enough to make me ever more dubious about their findings (and as the Torygraph certainly doesn’t like the idea of BNP supporters being ex-Tories, I’ve decided that as of *now*, YouGov are probably the most “independent” pollster at the moment. Not something anyone would have caught me saying a few years ago).

The poll also had local election voting stuff:

Lab 22%, Con 22%, Lib 16%, SNP 3%, PC 1%, Grn 4%, BNP 3%, Other 5%, Won’t Vote 7%, Refused 7%, Undecided 11%

I thought the Guardian’s headline overcooked things somewhat.We seem to be back in a spell when all the media headlines are bad for Labour, as in 2004 when Iraq domionated. A few Labour voters appeared to have peeled off to the usual protest bucket and it’s hard to see why the Lib Dems would benefit anymore than several other parties out there- given that their current media exposure is zero.

What on earth does Cameron have to do to get through that 40% barrier?

Al - demographically the ICM and YouGov samples should be identical, they are both weighted on the same demographic measures and the target figures are likely to be pretty much identical.

Part of the difference will be down to the political weighting of the samples - since the election ICM has tended to report Lib Dem support at a higher level than the other pollsters, while YouGov gives them the lowest rating. The two pollsters do their political weighting using different methods (ICM weights according to the recalled vote from 2005 provided during the interview, YouGov weights according to the party idenification that the respondent provided back in May 2005, stored on YouGov’s database) so can’t be directly compared, but I think it’s safe to say that the result is that ICM’s samples are politically more favourable to the Lib Dems than YouGov’s.

This month there is also the spiral of silence effect - ICM do a manual adjustment to reallocate don’t knows, which this month added 1 point to the Liberal Democrats’ raw score of 23%. YouGov, on the other hand, don’t suffer from the spiral of silence in the same way as other pollsters because there is no interviewer effect. Hence the larger BNP showing in the YouGov poll, pushing down the other parties, while BNP supporters in the ICM poll were more likely to lie about their true intentions and say don’t know.

Finally, one could simply be a blip!

I would be very, very surprised indeed if any pollster would ever allow their polls to be skewed by a papers editorial line - at least as far as their voting intention polls are concerned.

Since the tables and the weighting data are publically available, we’d be able to tell if a poll was deliberately skewed, and no pollster would ever stoop to falsifing results. The bottom line is that pollsters rely upon their accuracy and integrity to sell their product - for all the polling companies, the political polls in the papers are a tiny proportion of their income. The overwhelming majority of polling is corporate and commercial stuff. MORI, for example, get about 2% of their income from political stuff and 98% from commercial stuff. In YouGov’s last accounts I think it was something like 6% poltical stuff.

Why would any pollster risk destroying their reputation and damaging 98% of their income just to curry favour with the 2%? It wouldn’t make sense.

(That said, obviously there are times when a newspaper wants to write a story about, say, crime and toddles off to get a pollster to ask some questions where the answers are pretty damn obvious. I wanted to write an article on sentencing I know that if I commissioned a poll asking people what they think I would be pretty confidence that the answer would be that they’d like longer sentencing)

A few days there was another one of Frank Luntz’s focus groups on Newsnight in which Ming Campbell’s performance was castigated by most of the members of the group, so today’s poll showing 24% is quite surprising and must be very welcome for the Lib Dems. It’s true that the 7% difference in Lib Dem support between this poll and the previous poll from YouGov is quite worrying.

Re: Swifty’s comments - IMHO, I don’t believe David Cameron will be able to get the Conservatives up to 40% in the polls, because that would only be possible if people went back to supporting the parties in a tribal way, which I think won’t happen because there are too many people now who are supporting the minor parties, such as Greens, UKIP, BNP, Nationalists, etc.

I have a personal belief that it is very unlikely that any single party will win more than about 33% at the next election. Most of the polls now seem to be confirming that hunch.

Given the breaking news on foreign nationals released from goal and not deported, I think this could be a black week for Labour and unless they pull off something brillant a hammering at the election.

I am a bit annoyed that in all tonights reporting no one pointed out that all 1,000 people had actually served their sentences, and hadn’t actually escaped.

Given the News about rising BNP support and recent stories about prisoners on remand and probation committing crimes, I think we are in for a tabloid feeding frenzy.

It will be interesting to see David Camerons response, as this is the kind of issue that Micheal Howard would have died for this time last year. How will they play it, stick with “Nice Tories” or go back to being “the Nasty Party”.

Peter.

Like I said, I’m a cynic

I *don’t* think that they would ever dream of doing it during a General Election campaign o/c.