New ComRes poll gives small boost to Lib Dems
OK, we've now got the real results of the ComRes poll. A manic hour of speculation ensued earlier after ITN political correspondent Lucy Manning tweeted what purported to be the new ComRes poll for ITN:
What she had released were unweighted figures relating to those who had watched the leaders' debate.
Here are the real figures:
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A ComRes poll for ITV has just been released which the media are going to get extremely excited about and I suspect needs to be considered with a degree of caution.
The numbers are:
This would suggest that "Others" are down 8 points to just 5%, suggesting the Lib Dems would mop up the "plague on both your houses" vote.
Guido reports that it was a poll of 4,000 voters who had watched the TV debate last night.
More detail as and when it emerges.
12.30pm update:
Libertarian in the comments below notes the expert view David Cowling, editor of the BBC's Political Research Unit:
"This was not a voting intention poll but a panel of people who watched the debate and then gave their voting intentions afterwards. This is not a national random sample of the population - some 46 million people - but a sample of the nine million who watched the debate and we have no certainty that the sample even speak representatively for them."
12.45pm update:
Adam Boulton on Sky News reports that these are unweighted figures that were Tweeted by an ITV journalist and that we must wait until later today for the official figures.
1pm update:
Andrew Sparrow at The Guardian has managed to speak to someone at ComRes and establish what is going on:
"ComRes are not saying that the Lib Dems are now at 35%. The figures that are out on Twitter reflect the voting intentions of those who watched the debate. They do indeed show a huge jump in Lib Dem support. But only 9.4 million people watched the debate. There are more than 40 million voters in the UK. ComRes hasn't officially released its figures yet. When it does, it will give figures for the voting intentions of those who watched the debate. (These are the sensational ones, that we have already seen.)
"But ComRes will also release national polling figures, reflecting the views of those who watched the debate and those who didn't. ComRes are assuming that the 9.4 million who saw the debate have gone pro-Lib Dem in line with the results of their survey. But they are also assuming that the other 30 million or so voters who did not watch the debate haven't been influenced in this way. So the headline state-of-the-parties figures will show a swing to the Lib Dems – but not a massive one."
Jonathan Isaby
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