More on that ComRes European poll
The full tabs for the ComRes European election poll are now online here. The poll also asked Westminister voting intention and produced topline figures of CON 26%, LAB 37%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 20%. It did not use ComRes's normal method, excluding the reallocation of don't knows and their normal squeeze question, so it is not directly comparable.
The strangest thing about the poll though is the relationship between Westminster and European voting intention. I could be reading it wrongly, but it looks as though there is hardly any relationship at all. The overwhelmingly majority of people who said they would vote UKIP in a Westminster election said they would vote UKIP in a European election, as one might expect, but the other figures look very odd. Amongst Conservative Westminster voters, 12% would vote UKIP in the European elections, 39% Labour and 22% Lib Dem. Amongst Westminster Labour voters, 6% would vote UKIP in the European elections, 30% Conservative, 31% Lib Dem. Amongst Westminister Liberal Democrat voters, 2% would vote UKIP in Europe, 35% Labour, 33% Conservative.
People do, of course, vote differently at Westminster and European elections, but not to this extent. If we compare it to the Survation poll at the weekend, the vast majority of people who said they'd vote Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem for Westminster said they vote the same way in a European election. YouGov found the same when they asked back in January. ComRes's previous European Election poll in January didn't give cross-breaks for current Westminster voting intention, but the 2010 cross-break did at last suggest the majority of Labour and Conservative 2010 voters were sticking with their party in the European elections. I can't work out exactly what has gone wrong in this latest poll, but it certainly looks very strange.
