Sunday Polls
There are two polls in the Sunday papers. Firstly there is a nat-rep Populus poll for the Sunday Mirror. The topline voting intention figures, with changes from Populus's last poll, are CON 40%(+1), LAB 30%(-3), LDEM 19%(+2). The poll was conducted between 16th and 17th of April.
Populus's last poll showed a significantly smaller Tory lead than polls from other companies and in contrast to the figures from ICM who use almost identical methodology. Now Populus, ICM and YouGov are all showing double point Tory leads. ComRes and Ipsos MORI continue to show tighter figures.
Secondly there is a mruk Cello poll on the London mayoral race, published in the Sunday Times. It shows first round voting intentons of JOHNSON 44%, LIVINGSTONE 45%, PADDICK 9%. With second preferences re-allocated, the second round figures had the two lead candidates equal on 50%.
It is very hard to put this poll into any context: mruk Cello have no track record of voting intention polling outside of Scotland, and up there they overestimated Labour support compared to other pollsters prior to the 2007 election. While, like all polls, the figures were weighted to be representative, we don't know if that includes any political weighting (without which phone polls given much higher levels of support to Labour) nor how likelihood to vote was taken into account.
UPDATE: the mruk Cello poll was weighted by past vote (though we don't yet know to what figures so can't judge the effect). It wasn't prompted by party name, probably explaining that low figure for Brian Paddick. The turnout filter included all those 8+/10 likely to vote, so rather more generous than MORI's filter. This covered 75% of respondents. Thanks to Mike Smithson for getting the info.
