A quick update on voting intention pols
4 Aug 2018
A quick update on recent voting intention polls. When I last updated in mid-July, there was a clear trend towards Labour across the polling companies, with YouGov, Opinium, Deltapoll all showing the Conservatives dropping backing significantly in the wake of the Johnson & Davis resignations (whether one attributes that to the Chequers agreement or the resignations it is impossible to say from the evidence given they were so close together. My guess is that it is a combination of the two).
The later polling towards the end of July suggested that movement had flattened out a bit – the last four published polls are below:
YouGov/Times (20th Jul) – CON 38%, LAB 39%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 6%
ICM/Guardian (22nd Jul) – CON 40%, LAB 41%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 5%
YouGov/Times (23rd Jul) – CON 38%, LAB 38%, LDEM 10%, UKIP 6%
Ipsos MORI/Standard (24th Jul) – CON 38%, LAB 38%, LDEM 10%, UKIP 6%
As you can see, two had Labour a point ahead, the later two had the parties neck-and-neck again. That clear Labour lead we briefly saw appears to have quickly faded again once the media was no longer focusing on Chequers & the resignations. That’s not to say there is no lasting impact at all. Back in May and June polls were showing a consistent Tory lead – that has gone; UKIP appeared dead in the water, but in these latest polls they are still up at 5% or 6%. Finally, and least noticed, polls showing the Lib Dems breaching double figures are increasingly common. There were five of them in July, compared to just one in June and just one in May.

So basically the polls are all within the margin of error and mean nothing this far from an election anyway