New Welsh polls

This week there have been two new polls for the Welsh Assembly elections. The first was by Beaufort Research for the Western Mail and conducted between April 16th-23rd. We don't know much about how Beaufort's polls are weighted or adjusted other than that the poll is based only on those certain to vote. The full figures are:

Constituency vote: CON 19%, LAB 36%, LDEM 13%, PC 26% Regional vote: CON 20%, LAB 35%, LDEM 12%, PC 26%

This is Beaufort's first media poll of the campaign, though Plaid Cymru did release figures from a private poll conducted by Beaufort earlier in the campaign which showed figures of CON 14%, LAB 37%, LDEM 14%, PC 30%. It wasn't clear whether they were regional or constituency figures, but either way Plaid are now lower than in Beaufort's previous poll and the Conservatives higher... or, of course, there is a difference in how the polls were weighted or filtered and they aren't comparable.

The second poll is by NOP for ITV Wales, conducted between April 19th and 23rd. It is not a brand new poll, but a call back to around half the sample who participated in their poll earlier in the campaign. Their voting intention figures are below, with changes from the last poll, and show a big advance for Plaid at the expense of the Conservatives.

Constituency vote: CON 19%(-4), LAB 32%(-4), LDEM 15%(nc), PC 26%(+6) Regional vote: CON 18%(-6), LAB 34%(-1), LDEM 15%(nc), PC 24%(+4)

The levels of support for the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru are pretty similar in both polls, with Labour doing slightly worse in NOP's figures and the Lib Dems slightly better. I am somewhat dubious about the NOP poll though. As a callback poll it should be very stable indeed - the basic truth is that people really don't change their voting intentions that much, most of the change in voting intention polls is just sample error - yet in a matter of three weeks we have party support altering by 6 points. It seems strange.