About those "others"...

The Populus poll yesterday provoked rather a lot of comment on support for "others". They are up to 13% in this month's poll, from around about 9% last month. Most of the comments about it are pondering whether this is UKIP and the BNP (in fact, it's provoked a bit of a barney over on LabourHome.)

Does it mean anything at all? Well, yes and no. The graph below has the support for other parties in Populus's poll since Sept 2007 when they made a slight change to their methodology for measuring "other" support (the graph is based on the figures from Populus's table before their topline adjustment, since they don't always provide adjusted figures for "others").

You'd have to be a better man than I to pick any obvious trends out of that (and to people who occassionally ask why I don't do graphs for other parties - this is why). As you can see, support for "others" in polls bounces about from month to month (within their own tiny margins) and there are no obvious trends there. The BNP is one of the parties to have benefited this month, but not to an extent that it necessarily means anything at all, they were just as high last summer.

Separately, the levels of support for others don't mean much at all. Things are slightly more interesting though if you view them together. From November 2007 to October 2007 Populus had the total support for other parties at between 11% and 13%. Then for three months from November 2008 to January 2009, roughly co-inciding with Gordon Brown's bailout bounce, it fell to between 8% and 9%. Now the bounce has subsided the others are back up to 13%.

My guess is that that high others score contains lots of otherwise Labour voters who are annoyed with the government, went back to backing Labour after the bailout, and have now drifted off again.