Conservative Diary

« MPs who signed up for Fiji group named - also three peers in "cash for access" sting | Main | The wit and wisdom of Boris Johnson »

UKIP at record high with Opinium. (But is their method a good one?)

By Paul Goodman
Follow Paul on Twitter.

Screen shot 2013-06-02 at 08.14.24The figures in today's Observer were reported yesterday evening by Harry Phibbs. They are:

Conservatives: 26% (- 1 from a fortnight ago)

Labour: 37% (No change)

Liberal Democrats: 6% (- 1)

UKIP: 21% (+ 1)

It's worth comparing the figures above with those of YouGov's daily tracker, which are:

Conservatives: 30%

Labour: 39%

Liberal Democrats: 10%

UKIP: 15%

Over at Political Betting, Mike Smithson has written and tweeted that "Opinium is only online pollster that takes no steps to ensure politically balanced sample. Doesn't even ask about GE2010 vote".

What's not in dispute, however, is the trend - so, for example, UKIP were at 17% with ComRes last weekendAs Anthony Wells has put it: "The correct approach is to look at the broad underlying trend and ignore the odd looking polls, the media normally do the opposite.

"The trend is that UKIP support has jumped substantially following their local election success, and that the Labour lead has been narrowing."  Downing Street is hoping that better economic news pushes UKIP's figure down and trims Ed Miliband's lead back further.

Comments

You must be logged in using Intense Debate, Wordpress, Twitter or Facebook to comment.