Post-debate polls
We now have all four of the post-debate polls. Asked who performed the best, the verdicts are
YouGov: Sturgeon 28, Farage 20, Cameron 18, Miliband 15, Clegg 10, Bennett 5, Wood 4 (tabs) ICM: Miliband 25, Cameron 24, Farage 19, Sturgeon 17, Clegg 9, Bennett 3, Wood 2 (tabs) ComRes: Farage 21, Cameron 21, Miliband 21, Sturgeon 20, Clegg 9, Bennett 5, Wood 2 Survation: Cameron 25, Miliband 25, Farage 24, Sturgeon 15, Clegg 6, Bennett 3, Wood 2 (tabs)
The pollsters certainly don't show a single clear winner (until we digest the tables we can't really speculate about what caused the differences), but there's a consistent theme across those results. Everyone has Natalie Bennett, Leanne Wood and Nick Clegg
trailing, everyone has Ed Miliband and David Cameron doing pretty much evenly and pretty close to Farage. The only big difference is Sturgeon, YouGov have her out in front, others have her a bit further back. But given the SNP are only standing in Scotland, how well Nicola Sturgeon did in rest of Britain doesn't necessarily make a huge difference (though it may make the SNP a bit less scary as a bogeyman on Conservative posters).
As I wrote before the debate, one shouldn't assume too much what the impact of the debate is on voting intentions until we see some standard voting intention polls of the general public. With the initial polls showing no big runaway winner from the debate I wouldn't expect a big impact... but time will tell. The party I'd probably watch is UKIP - Farage wasn't a big winner, but he outperformed his party's national support in all of the instant verdict polls, and unlike the SNP, UKIP have candidates across GB that people can vote for.
