Three weeks to go
Here are this week's GB polls:
Opinium/Observer (9/4) - CON 36%, LAB 34%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 11%, GRN 6% YouGov/Sun (10/4) - CON 33%, LAB 35%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13%, GRN 5% YouGov/S Times (11/4) - CON 34%, LAB 34%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 13%, GRN 6% YouGov/Sun (12/4) - CON 33%, LAB 36%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 13%, GRN 5% Ashcroft (12/4) - CON 33%, LAB 33%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 13%, GRN 6% ICM/Guardian (12/4) - CON 39%, LAB 33%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 7%, GRN 7% Populus (12/4) - CON 33%, LAB 33%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 15%, GRN 5% YouGov/Sun (13/4) - CON 33%, LAB 34%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13%, GRN 6% TNS (13/4) - CON 34%, LAB 32%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 14%, GRN 5% YouGov/Sun (14/4) - CON 33%, LAB 35%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13%, GRN 5% YouGov/Sun (15/4) - CON 34%, LAB 35%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13%, GRN 5% Ipsos MORI/Standard (15/4) - CON 33%, LAB 35%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 10%, GRN 8% Panelbase (16/4) - CON 33%, LAB 34%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 16%, GRN 4% YouGov/Sun (16/4) - CON 34%, LAB 34%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 14%, GRN 5% Populus (16/4) - CON 33%, LAB 34%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 14%, GRN 4% Survation/Mirror (17/4) - CON 34%, LAB 33%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 17%, GRN 3%
Voting intention continues to be pretty much static, with levels of Conservative and Labour support extremely close. There were sixteen polls published in the last week, nine had the two parties within a point of each other. The UKPR polling average is back to showing a tie - CON 34%(+1), LAB 34%(nc), LDEM 8%(-1), UKIP 14%(-1), GRN 5%(nc). It is hardly been an exciting election campaign anyway, but certainly nothing seems to have made any significant impact upon voting intention and we are running out of time for anything to do so. The first postal ballots will have gone out this week.
Other polls
This week we've also had ComRes polling of Lib Dem seats in the South West and Ashcroft polling of some seats in Scotland. I've written about both of them at length already - Ashcroft here and ComRes here.
Week fifteen
This week was manifesto week - the five main GB parties all published their manifestos, though the SNP are saving theirs for later in the campaign. YouGov have done two bits of polling on the manifesto for the Times and the Sun.
The most widely supported policy in the Labour manifesto was to reduce the deficit every year (76% support - largely because it got the backing of Tory voters too), followed by the promise to raise the minimum wage to £8 (71% support), freezing utility bills (65%) and the mansion tax (61%) - none of their main policy announcements got a thumbs down.
Looking at the Conservative manifesto the most popular policy was linking the personal tax allowance to the minimum wage (supported by 80%, again because it got wide cross party support), followed by stopping above inflation rail fare rises (67%) and lowering the benefit cap to £23k (65%). Unlike Labour some of the main Conservative policies got a thumbs down - opening 500 new Free Schools only got 26% support, the flagship announcement of extending right to buy to housing associations only got 28% support.
I shall make my usual caveats about overestimating the importance of individual policies. Despite Labour's individual policies polling better, in the same poll the Conservatives had a narrow lead on having the best policies and ideas for the country (29% Conservative, 26% Labour). Neither do people pay much attention to these announcements - a separate YouGov poll for the Sun found that the right to buy policy was the only one of the manifesto policy announcements tested that a majority of people could correctly link to the right party - in most cases less than a third of people were able to say which party had proposed it.
Projections
The latest forecasts from Election Forecast, May 2015, Elections Etc, the Guardian and YouGov are below, as well as the less regular prediction from the Polling Observatory team who released some new numbers today. As ever, all show a hung Parliament, but most are now showing Labour with more seats in a hung Parliament - with the notable exception of Steve Fisher's model, which has the Tories with about 30 more seats than Labour. On the subject of the differences between the models, Chris Hanretty of the Election Forecast team wrote a blog post earlier this week.
Elections Etc - Hung Parliament, CON 292(+3), LAB 260(-6), LD 22(nc), SNP 51(+2), UKIP 4(-1) Election Forecast - Hung Parliament, CON 280(-2), LAB 277(+2), LD 27(-1), SNP 42(+1), UKIP 1(nc) May 2015 - Hung Parliament, CON 268(+3), LAB 276(-3), LD 26(nc), SNP 54(nc), UKIP 3(nc) Guardian - Hung Parliament, CON 269(-2), LAB 271(nc), LD 29(nc), SNP 55(+2), UKIP 4(nc) YouGov Nowcast - Hung Parliament, CON 266(+2), LAB 279(+2), LD 27(-1), SNP 50(-5), UKIP 5(+1) Polling Observatory - Hung Parliament, CON 268, LAB 278, LD 28, SNP 49, UKIP 3
