Euro and county elections - polling and predictions

Anthony Wells

— 1 min read
Share

YouGov's poll in the Sunday Times also included voting intention figures for the European elections. Topline figures (with changes from when YouGov last asked back in January) were CON 36%(+1), LAB 25%(-4), LDEM 20%(+5), UKIP 7%(nc), Green 4%(-1), BNP 4%(nc), SNP&PC 4%(nc). No other party reached 1%.

Despite their slump in Westminister polling, Labour are still above their actual vote share in 2004. The Conservatives and Lib Dems are also both substantially above their share of the vote in 2004, and I suspect the reason is that we still aren't seeing the sort of level of "other" support in the polls that we will eventually do on polling day.

This may be because people haven't considered the minor parties yet, and they will naturally rise during the campaign as their freepost addresses go out, alternatively it may be down to the problems of whether to prompt by minor parties in questions or not (a question I expect I'll write about in a lot more detail as we get closer to the election), or perhaps support for minor parties has genuinely fallen away.

For the record though, on a uniform swing, these figures would result in the Conservatives winning 30 seats (up 3), Labour 20 (up 1), the Lib Dems 13 (up 4), UKIP 4 (down 8 ) and the SNP and PC one each (though this is solely because of the uniform swing calculation, in reality their increase would obviously be only in Scotland and Wales and would result in more seats). The Greens would lose both their seats, and the BNP would fail to gain one.

The Sunday Times also has Rallings and Thrashers predictions for the local elections, based on local government by-elections. They are predicting a national equivalent vote share of CON 40% (up 9 from 2005), LAB 25% (down 9), LDEM 27% (no change) - this would equate to the Conservatives gaining 300 seats, Labour losing 250 and the Lib Dems losing an unspecified number. Labour would loose control of all of their remaining county councils, though it would not be quite enough for the Conservatives to talk overall control of Derbyshire.

Read more