Ignore the voodoo polls, Clegg won

A lot of comments here citing various voodoo polls from newspaper websites. Ignore them - they reflect the party allegiances of that website's audience (the Guardian's web poll has Brown second - shock! Daily Mail has Cameron first- wow!), do not attempt to be politically balanced or representative and are easy for interested parties to manipulate.

There were two properly conducted instant polls following the debate, carried out by YouGov and ComRes. Both show Nick Clegg winning, Cameron second and Brown last (YouGov has NC51, DC29, GB19. ComRes has NC 46, DC 26, GB 20). Angus Reid are also doing some polling, but it seems to be live overnight with final figures tomorrow.

The questions now are who people think is the winner once it has been filtered through the media tommorrow, and more importantly, what impact that has on voting intentions, how much of a boost will the Lib Dems get? Our first chance of getting a really good idea of that will probably be the polls on Saturday or Sunday. UPDATE: There was also an instant Populus poll for the Times. Once again, it showed Clegg winning (though by an even larger margin that the other polls!), followed by Cameron then Brown - figures were Clegg 61%, Cameron 22%, Brown 17%.

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