YouGov Scotland and prompting by party name
Two new YouGov polls today, one covering Scotland, the other their monthly GB poll for the Telegprah. The Scottish voting intention poll, with changes from their last Scottish poll, has constituency figures of CON 13%(-1), LAB 30%(nc), LDEM 15%(nc), SNP 39%(+2). Regional support stands at CON 13%(nc), LAB 27%(-1), LDEM 11%(-2), SNP 31%(-4), Green 9%(+5), SSP 3%, SCUP 3%, Solidarity 2%, others 2%.
The latest figures show the SNP lead in the constituency section growing to 9 points, but falling to 4 points in the regional section, largely it seems to the benefit of the Greens. However, this change is probably partially to do with the way the question was asked. Normally YouGov ask voting intention questions by giving respondents a list of the main political parties or "other" to chose from, people who select "other" are then given a list of minor parties to chose from. This is the way that earlier YouGov polls in Scotland were conducted. Today's poll however gave people a single list of all the Scottish political parties with seats in the Parliament to chose from.
This change is likely to increase the number of people saying they will support the minor parties. Including the name of the three main parties in the question tends to increase the level of Lib Dem support by a couple of percent as people were reminded that the Lib Dems were an option, so it is likely to have the same effect with smaller parties.
Theoretically it sounds fairer to include all the party names in the prompt, even minor and fringe parties, since when people come to vote all the party names will be on the ballot paper (or at least, they will in PR elections with regional lists. In general elections then in the majority of seats people won't have a Green or BNP candidate on their ballot paper.) Unfortunately, what is "fairer" isn't necessarily the same as what is more accurate. Back in 2004 YouGov's poll prior to the European elections prompted by all the party names, and it resulted in a poll that predicted too high a level of support for UKIP. In that case, including all the minor parties in the prompt made the results less accurate, even though the wording seemed "fairer".
It is impossible to say until after the event which approach will give the more accurate results. In this case, as Peter Kellner explains here, YouGov have chosen to go with a question that includes all the minor parties in the initial question because the results seemed more plausible - at the last election to the Scottish Parliament "other" parties received 22% of the vote. The last YouGov poll using the old version of the question wording showed the other parties together getting only 11% of the vote, half what they got in 2003, the new question shows the other parties together on 19%, still down on their 2003 support but not catastrophically so. We'll have to wait until next Friday to see which question wording really does produce the more accurate figures.
