ComRes poll of UKIP target seats

ComRes have a new battleground poll out, results here, this time looking at 10 Conservative held UKIP target seats. The poll covered some seats that UKIP announced as targets last year but taking out some that no longer seem realistic, like Aylesbury, and adding some obvious ommissions like Castle Point. The overall shares of the vote with changes since 2010 were CON 39%(-7), LAB 28%(+2), UKIP 21%(+15), LDEM 5%(-10), GRN 4%(+4). UKIP have obviously advanced strongly since 2010, but remain in quite a distant third place.

It's quite hard to know what to make of this poll. For a start, with UKIP coming from a very low base it's quite hard to accurately predict what their best chances of a gain are - so some seats here like East Worthing and Shoreham probably aren't in the top rank of UKIP targets. More importantly, with a poll of a group of marginal seats like this we can't tell what the distribution of the vote is between these different seats. Most estimates are for UKIP to pick up only a couple of seats beyond their two by-election gains (which are not included in this sample), so from this poll we can't tell whether UKIP have about 21% in all these seats (and hence wouldn't win any of them), or are doing much better in the more promising seats like South Thanet and Thurrock and less well in the others, meaning they could win some.

I suppose all we can reasonably conclude is that UKIP don't look like they are about to sweep the board across these seats, it's impossible to tell from this poll whether or not they are in a stronger position in a minority of them.