The final four polls

Anthony Wells

— 2 min read
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Most pollsters produced their final polls last night, ready to go in the first edition of whichever paper commissioned them. Today we have the final few companies - Ipsos MORI, who do polling for the Evening Standard so always publish on election day itself, Populus and Ashcroft, who do their polls on their own accord, so didn't have to finish in time for a print deadline last night. We also have the final figures from ICM, who put out interim figures for the Guardian yesterday, but then continued fieldwork into the evening.

  • Lord Ashcroft's final poll has topline figures of CON 33%, LAB 33%, LDEM 10%, UKIP 11%, GRN 6%. Full tabs are here
  • Ipsos MORI have final figures of CON 36%, LAB 35%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 11%, GRN 5%. Full details are here.
  • Populus have final figures of CON 33%, LAB 33%, LDEM 10%, UKIP 14%, GRN 5%. Tabs are here.
  • Finally ICM have published their final figures for the Guardian. Yesterday's interim numbers were 35-35, today's final figures shift only slightly to CON 34%, LAB 35%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 11%, GRN 4%. Tabs are here.

I said on Tuesday I'd revisit my final prediction in light of the final polls. My earlier prediction was based on Con and Lab being neck and neck, so no change there. The final few Scottish polls have shown slightly smaller leads for the SNP - between 20% and 23% - so while Labour are still neck-and-neck nationally, perhaps they are doing a little better in Scotland and a little worse in England than I predicted. We shall see.

As was the picture yesterday, all the polls are essentially showing a neck and neck race - they'll either all be about right, or all be wrong. The only company showing a gap of more than one point between Conservative and Labour is Panelbase, who have a two point Labour lead. Over the past few weeks there has been some comment on the apparent difference between phone polls and internet polls, whether phone polls were showing a Conservative lead and online polls not. If this ever was a pattern, rather than just co-incidence, it's not present in the final results, the average for the final telephone polls is CON 34.5%, LAB 34.3%; the average for the final online polls if CON 33.0%, LAB 33.0%. You'll note that online polls have both Lab and Con lower - that's because there is a significant difference between the pollsters on how well they think UKIP will do - telephone pollsters all have UKIP on 11-12%, but online pollsters vary between 12% from YouGov, Opinium and BMG right up to 16% from Survation and Panelbase.

And, that's it. The next poll will be the broadcasters/NOP/MORI poll at 10pm. I'll be working on the BBC election coverage through the night so won't be posting any analysis here overnight, but feel free to stay and chat in the comments section if you want. In the meantime, good luck to all standing and campaigning. Good luck to all pollsters on getting it right. And good luck to those poor souls who keep or lose their jobs tonight based on a public vote.

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