Friday round up

This morning's YouGov poll for the Sun has topline figures of CON 31%, LAB 39%, LDEM 11%, UKIP 12%. That's the third poll in a row showing an eight point lead, so it looks as though the further narrowing at the start of the week was a bit of a blip - full tabs are here.

There is also a Survation poll out for the Daily Mirror which has topline figures of CON 23%, LAB 36%, LDEM 10%, UKIP 22% (Full tabs are here). It's the lowest the Conservatives have shown in a poll this Parliament, and the closest UKIP have come to them, but that's largely for methodological reasons. If we go back to my post from earlier this week showing the house effects of different pollsters:

You can see that Survation normally show higher levels of UKIP support than other companies (a good seven points higher than ICM, who tend to show the lowest). As has been often remarked, this is partially because they are the only company to include UKIP in their main prompt, but that probably explains only a small part of the total difference, as there is a more general gulf between the levels of UKIP support that "new online" companies show, and the levels of support that the traditional telephone pollsters and YouGov show.

Part of this could be interviewer effect (though I doubt it - firstly UKIP voters don't seem particularly bashful or reticent, secondly if that was the reason we'd expect to see YouGov in the same place as other online companies), or it could be a sampling issue of some sort.