Latest Populus and Ashcroft, Green polling and Survation Scotland
Three new polls today - two GB polls and one Scottish one (and YouGov to come later).
A week ago we had sharply contrasting polls from Lord Ashcroft and Populus - one showing a chunky Conservative lead, one showing a chunky Labour lead, both probably outliers. Today's Ashcroft and Populus polls are far more normal, both showing a tight race between Conservative and Labour.
Topline figures from Populus are CON 35%, LAB 36%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13%, GRN 4%. (tabs). Lord Ashcroft's weekly poll has topline figures of CON 29%(-5), LAB 28%(nc), LDEM 9%(+1), UKIP 15%(-1), GRN 11%(+3) (tabs). While Ashcroft's gap between Labour and Conservatives looks a little more normal, the poll has an eye-catching Green score - up to 11%. This is the highest the Greens have scored in any poll since their initial but short-lived breakthrough back in 1989.
As ever, be wary of giving too much attention to the poll that looks interesting and exciting and ignoring the dull ones. The Greens certainly are increasing their support, but there is much variation between pollsters. Below are the latest levels of Green support from those companies who have polled so far in 2015:
Support varies between 11 percent from Ashcroft and just 3 percent from Populus. For the very low scores from Populus and ComRes there are at least clear methodological reasons: Populus downweight voters who identify as Green supporters quite heavily, while in ComRes's online polls they appear to have added a much stricter turnout filter to Green and UKIP voters since they started prompting for UKIP. At the other end of the scale Lord Ashcroft's polls have consistently tended to show a higher level of support for parties outside the traditional big three, but the reasons for this are unclear.
Meanwhile there was a new Scottish poll from Survation from the Daily Record. Topline Westminster voting intentions with changes from Survation's previous poll are CON 14%(-2), LAB 26%(+2), LDEM 7%(+2), SNP 46%(-2), GRN 3%(+2), UKIP 4%(nc). (tabs). It shows a small narrowing in the SNP lead, but it was from an extremely large lead last time, so it still leaves them with a huge twenty point lead.
