More about regional swings

Yesterday I wrote that to get a better idea of regional differences in swings you really need either properly weighted regional polls, or at least specially commissioned large scale polls. Sadly I can't offer you the former, but electoralcalculus have dug out the figures for the big YouGov poll carried out for Channel 4 straight after the European elections and obtained regional breaks for that.

The same caveats I made yesterday about polls not being internally weighted within regions still apply, but with a sample of 32,000 this poll does at least address concerns over the tiny sample size in most regional breaks.

I still wouldn't read that much into it because of the timing of the poll - straight after the European elections when the "other" vote was sky high. While it's still pretty high now, it has dropped by a third since this poll was conducted, so the huge swings towards "others" that this poll suggests for the South-West and North-East will have massively declined since then.

With all those caveats duly pointed out however, for what it's worth it shows the largest swings from Labour to the Conservatives in the North East, Wales, Yorkshire & Humberside and London. The smallest swings are in Scotland, East Anglia, the South East and the South West (though there is a larger swing from the Lib Dems to Conservatives there).