Tory lead cut to 2 percent in 60 key marginals

Alex

But YouGov has been taken to task on the excellent politicalbetting.com site for its weighting of voters. It's not finding enough Labour voters in its raw data and compensating along the lines of an extremely odd formula.

Canvassing in my London marginal, we're seeing much stronger figures than this with the Labour vote melting away, although intentions to abstain are very high.

Richard

Very interesting...it does cut across all previous attempts to get the picture in the marginals. Tory HQ must be getting very gittery now.
Time for a clear out of some of the millstones.

THX1138

It's a frigging disaster and even funnier considering Tim Montgomerie spins for CashcroftHome.

Anan

These are polls are ridiculous. So the same sample believe that Brown is the best to sort out the economic mess, while at the same time they trust the Conservatives more on the economy? What a load of nutters.

Dean

As Alex says, the YouGov methodology is questionable, and these results should not be taken too seriously until they are replicated by other pollsters. However, there is a clear trend away from the Tories, who will need to develop a much sharper campaigning strategy between now and May. Surely this is too much for George Osborne to take on, given that he has also proven himself to be technically inept and politically ineffective in the shadow chancellor role? Replacing him as campaign co-ordinator would be a good start.

One small crumb of comfort for the Tories: just think how much worse things would have been if Labour had actually replaced Brown with a younger, more media-friendly leader (and I don't mean David Millipede).

stevie

Again, well done to The Spectator, The Mail and The Telegraph for handing Brown 5 more years. Good on you.

Edward

Dave can take heart: when he had a 15+ point poll lead, I was seriously questioning whether to vote Tory, given the Lisbon farce. Now we're faced with the serious prospect of the nightmare continuing another five years, he has my vote. Not with much enthusiasm, but he has it. The alternative is, frankly, emigration.

Tom Pride

YouGov and Channel 4! Well that’s a combination which inspires confidence. I suppose you could do worse – Mori and BBC.

Perhaps Brown is going to be the Hugo Chavez of British Politics. If you want a sneak preview of the morning after the GE Thursday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67puOOQLHXA&feature=player_embedded

I knew they clapped him in but I didn’t know they clapped him out – presumably a job well done. The Beeb and toenails on great form too. (Hat tip Burning Our Money)

In all fairness Cameron has a mountain of partiality from supposedly impartial institutions to overcome.

HFC

Dunno 'bout you, but I always get a perverse pleasure from responding to YouGov and other such polls. (I am on their online panel.)

Tell 'em what I really think and feel? No fear.

Mark Cannon

I think you'll find that the LibDem share is 15%, not 35%. Otherwise the result would be very odd indeed.

J H Holloway

Bloody hell. That is a shock....

denis cooper

"... and the Conservatives are trusted more on the economy."

Not really: overall Labour and the Tories seem to be about level pegging on that, and there's no great confidence in either.

"If you had to choose, which of the following would make the best Chancellor after the next election?"

Cable 27%
Darling 17%
Osborne 15%

"Who would you trust more to raise you and your family's standard of living?"

Cameron + Osborne 30%
Brown + Darling 28%.

"Which of the party leaders do you think is best equipped to lead Britain out of its current economic difficulties?"

Brown 31%
Cameron 28%
Clegg 7%

But Brown is well ahead when it comes to:

"Which of the party leaders do you think best understands the problems ordinary people face in difficult economic times?"

Brown 27%
Cameron 18%
Clegg 12%.

Food for thought there, I suggest.

J H Holloway

While we're on with YouGov can anybody here confirm that the raw YG figures from the Tory 6-point lead poll of two weeks ago were actually

42(C)-28(L)

which were then readjusted heavily?

Do YouGov not have to release raw figures from their polls, including the one posted here?

Jez

Here's to all the CHQ advisers that are responsible for this utter debacle;

looooooooooooooooooooosers.

get a job that you incompetant, arrogant failure isn't going to f*ck the country up..... like MacDonalds maybe?

Unbelievable.

Dan Grover

Please tell me if I'm being silly, but surely the same "rules" don't apply to marginal seat polling? That is, it's always said that the Tories need between 5-7 point advantage to get a majority, but that's only the case because of gerrymandering and whatnot, right? So surely 2% in each seat (and I know that's an average) actually equates to 100% of the 60 seats? Again, I know it's an average so it's not saying that, but if you're only polling a single seat, whichever party gets more points wins the seat - there is no 5-7% margin. As such, a 2 point lead in the marginals is not the same as a 2 point lead in the nationals.

J H Holloway

Interesting note from Louise Bagshawe (PPC Corby) on ConHome

Louise Bagshawe said...

I have to say, that YouGov's recently and inexplicably changed weightings, which Peter Kellner refused to address on his appearance on politicalbetting.com - especially in that they weight Labour loyal up to 26% when other pollsters weight them down to 21% - are somewhat suspect. I infer no lack of integrity but I do infer a lack of accuracy.

This poll, although encouraging for the Tories, in my opinion greatly underplays the advantage in the marginal seats. I gather that our own consituency counts as an "ultra-marginal" and so would not have been included - this poll covers the tougher marginals only - but nonetheless this does not jibe with what I hear from PPC colleagues. At all.

With its old weightings system, YouGov consistently showed itself to be one of the most reliable pollsters around - look at their results for the London Mayoral election. It baffles me as to why, when a weightings system is working vs actual results in local and by-elections, you would change it to favour Labour and prop up their floor in advance of a general election. If it isn't broke - and YG's results said it wasn't - why fix it?

Shepley Tory

I'm working in a key West Yorkshire marginal (Dewsbury) and we are not seeing anythinng like these figures, we are consistently polling around 42% with significant numbers moving across from Labour. There are also significant numbers who haven't decided yet, but despite canvassing across the entire constituency, we have not picked up much enthusiasm for Labour which this would seem to suggest.

2trueblue

The 'marginals' chosen by YouGov/Channel4 were unnamed and had 6-14% Liebore majority. They are now aware that their polls are not trusted so are very kindly providing more information than usual.

I trust their figures as much as I trust the news on BBC, of which they report very little at present, they are so busy running Liebores election campaign. In fact there is no balance on our airwaves at present. It is very worrying. Have all the honest/balanced investigative journalists died?

Ghengis

Its absolutely no use vanishing into denial, thats Labour's only "talent" the electorate are set upon justice. In the absence of humility and clear evidence of a cleansing of Westminster as near as a powerless Parliament is what they intend.

TrevorsDen

Is a lead of 2% surprising? These are marginals where we ought to expect strong labour showing.

Chris

The denial of Conservative supporters at the moment is painful to read.

First, you claimed that that the slash in the lead nationally wasn't important - it would still be ok in the marginals.

and now that this argument has (partially) fallen through - you claim that the polling is wrong!

Talk about last resort...

YouGov have previously been the most accurate and they will need to change their methods from time to time in order to stay that way. There's no conspiracy theory!

Ian Walker

These polls do baffle me. What on Earth makes anyone in their right mind want to vote for Labour again?

TrevorsDen

various commentators on pb.com are busy trashing Kellners reputation.

He just assumes Tories will not win libdem seats. Once again you comment on a poll without relating it to its methodology.

mr Wells over at UKPR supports YouGovs methodology by saying that YouGove are not getting enough labpour respondents out of a supposedly balanced sample so they apply weightings to get the figure 'right'

I am sure Mr Wells will traduce me for explaining this badly - but the fact is YouGovs results are being heavily weighted to bring down the raw tory lead.

If any of this makes sense to anybody in Spectaor Towers then kindly explain it to the rest of us.
I am told Kellner was on the radio slagging off the Tories - Ho Hum

strapworld

When I commented earlier that Cameron should step aside, I said that the people do not trust Cameron The latest poll askes the question:-
"Which of the party leaders do you think best understands the problems ordinary people face in difficult economic times?"

Brown 27% Cameron 18% Clegg 12%.

That is quite a figure, which even I find hard to accept. BUT the conservatives have got to face facts. This PR man aint no good at...err PR! he ost certainly is not a leader!

I do hope for the sake of the Country (he says he is patriotic) and for his party he must step aside sooner rather than later.

THX1138

TrevorsDen "jumps the shark" and the seats you need to win and where Cashcroft has spent £millions of OUR money.. Same CH4 Poll says only 1 in 5 in key marginals say Cameron would be a change for the better and your trying to spin this as a positive - LOL!

TrevorsDen

A commentator on UKPR makes the following point ...

"This swing is big enough for the Tories to win all the seats they need from Labour to win an overall majority.
Number 117 on the Tory target list is Sefton Central, where the swing required is 6.1%. This poll shows a 6.5% swing. So the Tories would win more seats than they need from Labour on the basis of this poll – 4 more in fact.
Whether they’d win an overall majority depends on the swing from LD to Con in the 22 easiest Tory target seats from the LDs.
Peter Kellner has given his opinion that he thinks the Tories would be “doing well” to win more than 10 of these seats, but that has nothing to do with this particular poll of marginals.
The 11th Tory target from the LDs, for example, is Torbay (majority = 6.0%), and the 12th is Sutton & Cheam (majority = 6.2%)"

But the real situation is that people pretending its OK to vote UKIP are just kicking the country in the bollocks.

And critics of a mainstream centre-right, as opposed to a loony tune right, tory approach should realise how that would totally and justifiably alienate a key section of voters.

Right now all we are seeing is labour retreating back into their core vote. Good luck to them.

Nicholas

"Which of the party leaders do you think best understands the problems ordinary people face in difficult economic times?"

Brown 27% Cameron 18% Clegg 12%.

Actually that's quite a tricky question which if answered honestly could be completely apolitical. One could argue that because of Cameron's background he does not understand as well as Brown - but that does not mean the people answering that way would not vote for him.

It seems Kellner has become part of New Labour's pre-election (unannounced) government election campaign. I expected the resistance to get more stubborn and draw in the British soviet bloc as the bunker came under direct threat. They are just fighting to keep the hated Tories out, with no love for Brown.

Noa Zrk

Strapworld
"I do hope for the sake of the Country (he says he is patriotic) and for his party he must step aside sooner rather than later".
I'm afraid the Conservatives will have to enter the election race with the present rider.
If he resigned tomorrow, Brown's reaction would be to stick a cork up his sphincter and call an immediate election.
Johnson, Hannan or Hague, for example, now have no time to portray any persona or alternative political credo.
For better or worse, the Tories have to stand by their leader and basically, the current game plan or appear as loathsome as Labour.
I foresee that hung Parliament...

David Ossitt

This is all getting very silly; we have in this country of ours, an incompetent government, probably the worst government in over a hundred years, certainly the worst in my life time.

We have a depleted; demoralised army, who are being asked to fight and die in an unwinnable war, that we should never have been involved with and we are told will go on for years if not decades.

The countries finances are in almost total meltdown, with a dishonest government printing money, as though we were a third world banana republic.

Our first minister is hated by his colleagues, loathed by the opposition, and is in all probability as nutty as one of my wife’s fruit cakes.

Production is at an all time low, immigration at an all time high, an education system in a shambles, a health service that kills people, a welfare system that encourages idleness, and a justice system that is manifestly unjust.

Yet opinion poll after opinion poll, would suggest a hung parliament.

Well I for one do not believe it, somehow, someone or other is taking the Michael.

YA

These polls are diversion of lefti liars, and should be ignored. Zero trust in all this. Everyone who is in sane mind understands that there are only 2 choices - or Tories or UKIP.

Right On

Strapworld - I think you are guilty of some wild over reactions. I'm not Cameron's biggest fan but you can hardly say he's failed.

When he became leader the party was unelectable - now they are not running away with the election in polling terms but that was never likely as an enormous swing was needed and there are still parts of the country who are voting in the 1987 election.

Polls were always going to close especially with such partisan media coverage (the BBC have pretty much become the UKs version of FOX News) and with a wobble about any new government.

I still think the polls are out, and I still can't believe the British people will give this government more time after the mess they've made of the economy.

Yosemite Sam

At a given time, in a population at large, X% support Labour, and Y% support the Tories. These are 'true' numbers. A sample is taken, it finds sample proportions of A% and B% for Labour and Tory. However, the pollster wants to estimate X and Y using A and B, so it makes adjustments based on past experience or other information. There is an assumption of some degree of stability in these adjustments. These adjustments are the 'weightings'. The reported proportions are estimates not true numbers. All this is standard statistical practice and can be very sucessful. However, it is much harder to get good estimates when circumstances are changing - because the weightings themselves become subject to error and can compound the error in the sample. Consistent, very large adjustments to the 'true' numbers by use of weightings is a sign of danger in the estimates. I would suspect that You Gov might be concerned by the size of some of the adjustments needed to produce their estimates. As I understand it, the raw data of a number of You Gov samples has shown much greater Tory support than has been reported. This is not just an isolated case but has happened on a number of polls. if this is correct, then there appears to be a consistent downgrading of Tory support which should make You Gov take pause.

Yow Min Lye

As Norman Tebbitt reminded us a few days ago in the Daily Telegraph, the bookies (ie: people putting real money on the outcome of the election) are still confident of a Tory majority after May 6th.

malone

Kellner, CEO of YOuGov & husband of Lady Ashton, EU foreign minister, is trying to create a self-fullfilling herd effect in the polls and the media bias and lemming like approach to un-question this and their desire to follow the new narrative is behind all this.

Dorothy Wilson

If YouGov is based on registering with them via the internet doesn't that cut out all those people who are not internet savvy? And wouldn't a good proportion of them be pensioners - the people most likely to vote?

paulg

Any thought of a labour comback is complete nonsense, they are down and out, kaput finished! There is only one poll that matters and that is the election. No party can come back from where they are, no human being is irrational enought to vote for them.

john

The Conservatives should have put pressure on the BBC, now we are suffering the consequences. I actually find its bias quite shocking.
8pm News 24 they were making a big deal out of Ashcroft, totally out of all proportion.
We need a referendum on the licence fee :tick the band you are happy with.
I also think we need a referendum on Scotland, although I suppose if the Conservatives get in then the Scots may fix it themseleves.

gordon-bennett

I remember Peter Kellner appearing frequently on newsnight to explain the machinations at the local labour party branch to which he belonged.

He is married to labour's baroness ashton.

I think he is a socialist and doing his best for nuchav.

THX1138

If YouGov is so crap why did Cashcroft spend 250K of OUR money with them for his private polling! And the Guardian is reporting that he bought the polling via an Offshore Co so he didn't have to pay the VAT..Is there any limit to this man's shiftyness?

Athesius the Facilitator

Kellner is a lefty. In fact they are all lefties who move and shake the TV world. All ITV breakfast, all sky news, all BBC news both TV and Radio. What chance do the Conservatives have against these kind of odds? The thing that gets me is how blatant it is. When they are accused of bias they snigger like little kids and then look very coy. Cameron should start calling their bluff and name and shame the lot of them. Some Democracy when the whole of the media are pump primed by the Government to skewer an opposition that hasn't held the levers of power for 13 years.

JONNY

And then we get dear old strapworld
waffling on as usual
about replacing Cameron as Leader
without having the foggiest who that might be
Lazy slipshod thinking strapworld
Put Up or Shut Up

SUSAN HILL

But do remember the year - was it 1974 ?- when every poll going predicted a big Labour majority and the Tories (Heath) got in.

tonyp17

I have never read the result of so many polls; and the election has yet to be called.

Frankly they tell us very little as most people interviewed would be coy about their true voting intentions.

I do not understand why the media spend so much time analysing them.

What us important is to make clear the dangerous policies being followed by Brown and the absolute need to force him out. This is currently being given too little prominence.

TGF UKIP

The collapse in the Cameron Tories standing on economic matters speaks volumes as does the falling off the cliff of Dave's personal ratings especially viz a viz Brown.

The blunt truth, which the Camerloons obstinately refuse to face up to, is that the more the voting public see of Dave the less they are convinced.

The Tories' inability to bring home to the public the perilous state of our economy demonstrates what a complete political failure the "Leadership" is. The Cameron/Osborne/Hilton combination has been, is, and will continue to be disastrous for the Conservative Party.

The equally guilty parties, though, are those elements of the Tory Press, so well represented on the Spectator, who have so enthusiastically backed and been ever willing apologists for their beloved Cam.
By their repeated failure to kick him up the arse and make excuses for him, instead of holding him culpable, they should be held equally accountable on the soon to dawn day of reckoning.

Moraymint

Ian Walker asks, "These polls do baffle me. What on Earth makes anyone in their right mind want to vote for Labour again?"

Ian, you may not be factoring in several features of the British way of life and its population after 13 years of Labour government and a fierce, Marxist ambition to transform our society into a permanent socialist state ...

... dumbed down education system (who the hell gives a toss about the public sector deficit when you can watch the X-Factor or get your arse tattooed)
... government propaganda aka telling barefaced lies
... an acquiescent national broadcasting company aka the BBC
... uncontrolled immigration
... 8 million economically inactive citizens
... 7 million people employed directly or indirectly by the state
... multi-generational welfarism
... an emasculated parliament
... thousands of new liberty-stifling laws
... government facilitation of debt-fuelled consumerism
... government facilitation of a housing bubble
... debt-fuelled state spending

(need any more?)

... all topped off with an almost total absence of political opposition, ie no articulation of a credible alternative to the socio-economic catastrophe that is
Gordon Brown's brainchild.

Sure, the Labour Party in government has been a disaster - we'll feel the horrific realities of this in the next few years. And, oh boy, it's going to hurt real bad. Our situation is pretty much unprecedented.

But what is particularly galling is the failure of the Conservative Party to have opposed Marxism effectively for the past decade and more. The Blues went along with it all.

So now we're on the receiving end of a triple whammy. Rubbish government. Rubbish opposition. Tanked economy.

From all this will now flow civil unrest, believe me. A critical mass of our duped and state dependent fellow citizens live in blissful ignorance of the steam train hurtling towards us.

Nicholas

David Ossett: "Well I for one do not believe it, somehow, someone or other is taking the Michael."

Yep! Somehow the polling figures have become part of the New Labour spin/dirty tricks machine.

TGF UKIP

Pete, you keep telling us that if we're logged in, our posts go straight through and appear without moderation in quick order. Demnonstrably they don't. When is the Speccie going to spend some brass and get this blogsite properly fixed. At the moment it really is pretty shit.

Too many tight arsed Scotsmen involved, I guess.

THX1138

TGF I think it's too many tight arsed Channel Islanders

strapworld

JOHNNY, grow up. read what I have written and you will see I have answered the question already. You, son, are the lazy one. Never an intelligent contribution always insulting. Boy you are a sad individual.

If you go through life thinking that there can only be one person fit for the job what a sad person you are. Also, as I have mentioned, we can learn from Australia and Canada. They showed how to get a conservative government again.

This is the last time I shall respond to your thoughtless contributions.

Noa Zrk

Moraymint - seconded.

But - in my worst nightmare Brown appears on Newsnight to tell a suitably fawning fellow Scot, comrade Lady Kirsty Wark, that, in our best interests he has suspended any election until he has saved the UK. Cue 500 dancing hawks entering the studio singing hallelujah and the heads of Nick Griffin and Nigel Farragh being borne on silver platters..
I'd like to say that at this point I wake up in a cold sweat, but no, I'm still living in a bad dream.

JONNY

A lot of blather but no answer strapworld.
Except to tell us what we knew already.
I.e. that you have nobody credible in mind. That's fair enough.
But don't let it worry you. If there was such a person I'd have thought of him first.

Roy Smith

They don't deserve the small lead they have. If they can't be bothered to concentrate their efforts on matters the people think important, they deserve to further their ambitions in the shade. It is an immense shame so many look to them for a rescue attempt. And are forced to look elsewhere. In fact they have to hunt bloody hard to find an inkling of policy that suits the way they feel. So daft and bereft of any common sense are the ideas issuing forth, one is inclined to despair and wonder what on earth is in the water.

mitch

Calm down, this is just YouGov fiddling the figures for Gordon so the remaining activists will turn out and campaign rather than sit at home drowning their sorrows at 3 terms in opposition.

Rob P

I agree with Nicholas.

If I were planning to steal an election via dirty tricks (postal votes, ballot boxes tampered, etc) I would probably prepare the ground by getting a safe pair of hands in a polling organisation to use outrageous weightings to skew the public's perception of my popularity. Then when an dodgy election result ensued, there would be less likelihood of it being questioned.

After which, of course, the political landscape could be gerrymandered (using a friendly national television station and beneficial voting system) to provide a permanent left-wing supremacy.

Or am I simply paranoid? We are talking about Brown after all...

stephen

what a complete and utter mess! The Tories come accross as venal and incompetent and not to be trusted with the finances of the country. I wonder what odds the bookies will be giving nearer 6 May on Boris leading the Tory Party?

TomTom

Just what is a Marginal ? Why aren't all seats marginal if this regime is so awful ? What about OTHER parties in these Marginals and what about Turnout the great unspoken threat to pollsters' profits.

The simple fact is volatility in the electorate is much more widespread than these Establishment Parties care to admit which is why they are running neck and neck

J. Y Elmworth

Is this the time that the Tories must get serious, they need to put Britain ahead of party politics by bringing in experience and remove the lightweight friends of D.C? Tories can not negate their responsibility to this country because of the fear of the dire potential financial situation they will inherit, they should roll their sleeves up and get on with the job should they become elected.

Vulture

With his buttocks still red and sore from the caning I was obliged to administer yesty before Prep, Richard 'little Dicky' dares to show up again with more illiteracy.

He says the Tories must be getting 'gittery'.
No, Dicky - its you and yours who are the 'Gittery' : as in 'Gits'.

The word you wanted was 'jittery'. As I expect you are at the prospect of the beating you are going to get again tonight.

Don't worry : you will learn. But it will be a slow process with plenty more pain to come.

Taipei Exile

Enough of these hourly polls please. People are so disillusioned with the political establishment they probably enjoy ribbing the pollsters. I'd say that until an election date is fixed and people know that they actually have to make a decision then polls are a waste of time.

denis cooper

Trevorsden @ 7:37 pm - "But the real situation is that people pretending it's OK to vote UKIP are just kicking the country in the bollocks".

Maybe you'd like to vote for them, to make sure they vote the right way?

Of course it's OK for people to vote UKIP, if they choose to vote UKIP.

Which they might do because they would prefer to express their support for a party which is genuinely on the side of the country and its people.

If Cameron wanted the support of patriotic voters, he would try to prove that he deserved it; but when he thought that he wouldn't need their votes he showed his true colours - not red, white and blue, but blue and yellow - and made it clear that he doesn't actually want their support.

So be it; the die is cast and events will take their course.

Clarke trying to precipitate a sterling and gilts crisis for party political ends - now that's kicking the country in the bollocks.

Tories who refuse point blank to consider joining a National Government - that's also kicking the country in the bollocks.

Nobody should accept lessons in patriotism from supporters of a party which is unpatriotic at its core, and only pretends to be patriotic when that suits its electoral purposes.

Ian Walker

Moraymint: thanks for the explanation. I'm beginning to think that Wells was right, and we really are evolving toward the Eloi and Morlocks, although I rather hope that a) I am an Eloi, and b) we can avoid their fate.

Its an old threat, often uttered, but seldom followed up on, but if Labour win this time round, I really will leave the country. Because it won't really be Britain any more.

John Bracewell

Take a look at the home page on the UK Polling Report website.
There are 3 indications you can easily find:
1. Under ' Latest Voting Intentions', there is a list of 25 opinion polls from all companies. If you study them you will find that YouGov consistently report results which have smaller Con leads than the other pollsters report.
2. There is a UKPR Polling Average which shows Con 38 Lab 31 LibDem 19 @ 10.02 5/3/2010. That is a lead of 7% for the Conservatives as opposed to Kellner's statement of 4.5% lead nationally, made during the marginal's poll.
3. Anthony Wells writes in the summary of Thursday's poll by YouGov that the Con lead remains steady at 6%, again contrast this with Kellner's 4.5%.

These are figures you can find on the UK Polling Report and are not partisan in any way. You can derive your own conclusions when comparing them to statements by Peter Kellner. When you add the 2% differential that was reported in the marginal seat polling results, there is a different picture to be seen.
Since Opinion polls are only indications, none of this is meant to predict the outcome of the General Election but statements made which are different to the figures being put out can affect the public's thought processes, especially when a lot of people will not bother to look at the raw figures themselves.

Rachael

Peter Hitchens' excellent blog (he's no fan of Dave, by the way) has long exposed the use of opinion polls to try to influence public opinion.

It's not dissimilar to the rigged Question Time audiences in the way that it tries to make people feel they are wrong.

Other posters here point out that YouGov, run by a man with a strong Left bent, takes the 'I don't knows' (the proportion of poll respondents in the 'I don't know' camp can go above 30 per cent) and then magics up from that - using a no doubt 'scientific' formula - a number of votes for the main parties. So that data is provided by the pollsters' 'method'.

Peter Hitchens has gone into detail on this many, many times. It makes fascinating reading.

Vulture

@John Bracewell;
Thanx for that sensible summary. YouGov boss Peter Kellner ( the word means 'waiter' in German; how very appropriate) - is a faithful servant of the Liebour lie machine, as you would expect of the husband of the world's ugliest woman,
Liebour's unelexcted EU stooge 'Lady' Ashton

I heard him yesty on The World at One trying to big upthe Cashcroft story to the disadvantage of the Tories and play down the Liebour dodgy donors. The nexus between the BBC and YouGov in Liebour's favour is
close - but you can still see the join.

If Dave had balls as well as sense he would warn Mark Thompson that revenge will be taken on the Beeb after the election unless this blatant rigging is stopped. But sadly he does not have said Cojones.

Jonathan Wilkinson

Peter Kellner is a close and personal friend of Gordon, his inept wife has been shoehorned into a lucrative role in the EU, and made a Baroness, aka Ashton. The YouGov poll is and always will be a statistical fiddle and in this case Peter Kellner looks like he is fiddling to support Gordon. I spend all day talking and meeting people in my job, and I have not met a single person, whether from the public sector or private, who has a good thing to say about Gord. Not surprising given that Labour have been in power for 13 years, all people under early 30's know no other and want change, maybe not Tory but they do not want labour. Gordon's entire reputation is in tatters, on the economy - "no more boom and bust", even my old mother doesn't beleive him and she struggles to understand the gas bill, wars dont go down well, bullying, endless coups from his own side etc. None of this is Westminster bubble, and no-one I speak to has any deep undertsanding of "policies". They just want a change and see Gordon as a miserable old git. So, do you beleive these fiddled and manipulated polls? I wouldn't.
One last point, the BBC is totally biased, it hammers the Tories, ridiculs LibDems, derides UKIP and BNP, and yet arse-licks Labour and cuddles the Greens. It is disgraceful and no different that the manipulation that goes on in Iran. The BBC should be brought to task on this, I saw Michael Gove put Kirsty Wark on the spot about endlessley going on about Ashcroft, really a non story, and not mentioning at all that the same arrangements with non-doms occurs with Labour and Lib, and she was stuttering and spluttering, caught out by her sad and shameless political bias

DavidL

Yosemite Sam gives a good primer on weighting but I would like to add some points. YouGov are using, as I understand it, the template of the 2005 election. This means that their sample should contain roughly 37% labour supporters and 33% Tory (the Lib Dems as always don't count). They are finding a much higher band of Tory identifying supporters so they then dilute that back to the 2005 template. This in itself assumes a high degree of stability especially at the far end of a 5 year Parliament. What is concerning some on PB is that they may also be assuming that but for the Iraq war Labour would have got even more votes in 2005. That may be right or it may be wrong but if that is being done it further increases the weighting applied to the results. The result of these weighting adjustments is that the figures actually published are determined as much by the underlying assumptions made as the raw data. These assumptions may be right or wrong. Peter Kellner is clearly a Labour supporter but he is also a well established highly skilled professional whose judgement cannot be readily disregarded. What is important to appreciate, however, is that these polls are still based on educated guess work and if the world has been substantially changed by minor matters like economic melt down, increasing unemployment, blatant and repeated lying (in fairness not a new phenomenon) it may be that the assumptions are incorrect. I like to believe so.

Tyranosaurus

Raw data has a con:lab split of 45:32, spun data has 39:37 - need we say more?

If my students massaged their data like this, I would send them back to do it again. If a poll is shifting its data by this much then it is meaningly and needs to be looked at again.

MarchHare

This is really getting silly - and I mean the comments on this board. Please, if you don't understand the fairly simple and widely used methodology of statistical weighting then don't start complaining about polls being rigged until you do. Google it - it isn't very complicated. In short, no poll can ever be said to have been conducted on a representative sample of a given subject population. So once poll results are in, the make-up of the poll's respondents is compared to a given series of comparisons for the whole population in order to scale up some responses and scale down others based on demographic information, social groups, population distribution, likelihood to vote and (for online polls) weighting up in favour of that segment of the population who aren't internet literate. That's why the raw numbers change. There's no universal or uniform way of doing this, as tweaks constantly occur as circumstances change. But YouGov have a pretty good record at being flexible and accurate, and while I agree it's a little odd that their spokesperson is so closely connected to a major political party, no polling company on earth would want to make wrong predictions - it would ruin their business! And lest we forget, YouGov's biggest shareholder is a prominent Conservative supporter (and former candidate) and owns ConservativeHome. Enough with the conspiracy theories - it's probably just a rogue poll...

Tyranosaurus

MarchHare - I will have to disagree with you - the change from a lead of 13% in the raw data (this is a big lead on seats where Labour was ahead in 2005) to a lead of only 2%, which is insignificant given the size of the polls, simply as a result of YouGov's weighting is an issue - either their weightings are substantially wrong or there are problems with their sampling. It is worth looking back through their raw data over a wide range of time - do that and you will see that the 2010 weightings are out of step with earlier ones. It is not the demographic weightings that are the issue here - they are both small and simple to follow as you suggest, the issue is with the political weightings which are both large and shrouded in mystery (and, because of their nature, largely subjective). Far too much is being read into these figures.

General Zod

So, the Tories are ahead in the marginals, where, by definition, the difference should be narrower, so they win the marginals and win the election.