Five weeks to go
A light round up this week - I'm taking it easy for the Easter weekend in advance of the long slog ahead. Here are this week's polls (note Opinium one is a little older than some of last week's polls - in these round ups I include polls published in the last week, even if the fieldwork is a little older.
Opinium/Observer (25/3) - CON 34%, LAB 33%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13%, GRN 7% YouGov/S Times (28/3) - CON 32%, LAB 36%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13%, GRN 6% ComRes/ITV/Mail (29/3) - CON 36%, LAB 32%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 12%, GRN 5% Ashcroft (29/3) - CON 36%, LAB 34%, LDEM 6%, UKIP 10%, GRN 7% Populus (29/3) - CON 34%, LAB 34%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 15%, GRN 4% TNS BMRB (30/3) - CON 33%, LAB 32%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 16%, GRN 5% YouGov/Sun (30/3) - CON 35%, LAB 35%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 12%, GRN 5% YouGov/Sun (31/3) - CON 35%, LAB 36%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 12%, GRN 5% Populus (1/4) - CON 32%, LAB 34%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 15%, GRN 5% YouGov/Sun (1/4) - CON 36%, LAB 34%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13%, GRN 4% YouGov/Sun (2/4) - CON 37%, LAB 35%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 12%, GRN 5% Panelbase (2/4) - CON 33%, LAB 33%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 17%, GRN 5%
The week started out with a bit of a false alarm as the first poll conducted after the Paxman interviews produced a four point Labour lead. It wasn't repeated in other polling, with the rest of the week showing more typical neck-and-neck polling. The UKPR polling average is back to showing the Conservatives and Labour equal - CON 34%(+1), LAB 34%(nc), LDEM 8%(nc), UKIP 14%(nc), GRN 5%(nc).
Constituency, London, Scottish and Welsh polls
Lord Ashcroft released a new batch of constituency polls, this time revisiting some previously polled Lib Dem seats. As with his previous polling of Lib Dem seats, the key finding was variation - in some areas the Lib Dems are collapsing, in other areas they are holding up well. I wrote more about all the seats polled here, but the one that got the most attention was Sheffield Hallam, which still showed Nick Clegg's own seat at some risk.
There were also new YouGov and ComRes polls in London, which showed 11 point and 14 point leads for Labour in the capital, and a ComRes poll in Labour held seats in Scotland, showing a swing of 19 points from Lab to SNP, the equivalent of a 16 point SNP lead in a Scottish poll. The latest YouGov poll in Wales had topline figures of CON 25%, LAB 40%, LDEM 5%, Plaid 11%, UKIP 14%, GRN 5%.
Week thirteen
The main event of the political week was the seven way leaders debate. The initial polls after the debate did not show any clear winner - different polling companies showed different politicians ahead, but broadly speaking there was a pretty even divide between Nicola Sturgeon, Ed Milband, David Cameron and Nigel Farage. It seems unlikely that a debate that produced no clear winner will have any dramatic effect upon people's voting intentions, but we need to wait and see the evidence. While Nigel Farage didn't win the debate, he did poll better than UKIP currently are in the polls, so it may give his party a boost. While the SNP aren't standing across most of Britain, Nicola Sturgeon doing well could blunt the Conservative party's warning about a Labour government reliant on SNP support.
Next week we have the close of nominations, so we'll actually know how many candidates each party is standing. We also have the leaders debate in Scotland to come.
Projections
The latest forecasts from Election Forecast, May 2015, Elections Etc and the Guardian are below. I've also added the Nowcast from YouGov's new model, which currently shows a hung Parliament like everyone else, but with more Labour seats than Conservative.
Elections Etc - Hung Parliament, CON 300(+4), LAB 258(-3), LD 20(-1), SNP 47(nc), UKIP 5(nc) Election Forecast - Hung Parliament, CON 284(+1), LAB 276(-4), LD 26(nc), SNP 40(+2), UKIP 1(nc) May 2015 - Hung Parliament, CON 278(+5), LAB 267(-4), LD 25(+1), SNP 54(-1), UKIP 3(-2) Guardian - Hung Parliament, CON 276(-1), LAB 270(+1), LD 28(+3), SNP 50(-3), UKIP 4(nc) YouGov Nowcast - Hung Parliament, CON 262, LAB 276, LD 28, SNP 56, UKIP 7
