01/04/2014
UKIP supporters were quick to accept the
YouGov verdict on the debate last week, when 57 percent voted in favour of Farage, as opposed to 36 percent for Clegg. More usually, though, they refer to the identity of Peter Kellner's wife as proof of bias, thereby enabling them to discount any adverse findings.
No doubt they will say that Baroness Ashton has influenced the latest
YouGov voting intentions poll, done for the
Sunday Times. It records 40 percent for Labour, 33 percent for the Conservatives, 9 percent for the Lib-Dems and 11 percent for UKIP.
For those whom
YouGov really is the Devil's spawn, though, we have yesterday's
Populus poll which gives Labour lead of three points, on 37 percent, the Conservatives 34 percent, the Lib-Dems on 10 percent (+2) and UKIP with 11 percent (-1). One guesses that Baroness Ashton must have been there as well.
We can also reply on the
Opinium poll in the
Observer (see chart below) on Sunday. It puts Labour on 33 percent (down two points on a fortnight ago), the Conservatives on 32 percent (up two), the Lib-Dems unchanged on 10 percent and UKIP 15 percent (down one). This poll tends to give UKIP a higher score than many others but is now putting the party at its lowest point for a year, with a drop of one percent over the period in which the debate was held.
The particular significance of these polls is that they come after the great debate, and show no "bounce" for UKIP. The victory claimed in the snap poll does not appear to have influenced national sentiment or bled through into voting intentions. The anti-EU party continues to flatline, or decline. The Lib-Dems, on the other hand, have (according to
Populus) picked up two points.
But then, up pops the
YouGov results for
31 March. That puts Labour on 37 percent, Conservatives on 34 percent, Lib-Dems on 11 percent and UKIP on 13 percent, a two-point hike for the anti-EU party. This could be called a delayed action improvement in approval rating, or it could just be a reflection of the normal variation in this poll.
So we turn to the
Independent's latest "
poll of polls", offering a monthly weighted average of surveys by ComRes, ICM, Ipsos MORI and
YouGov. It puts Labour on 36 percent, having dropped three points during March, while the Conservatives rise one point to 33 percent. The Lib-Dems are up one point on 11 percent while UKIP is unchanged on 11 percent.
We can now also use as a baseline the
Populus/FT poll (top pic) which samples 16,000 voters over the month. This cannot measure the debate effect, but its results give us a more stable comparator. It puts Labour on 36.6 per cent, down 0.5 on the previous month; the Conservatives on 34 percent, up 1.5, the Lib-Dems on 9.4 per cent, down 0.2, and UKIP 12.2 percent, down 1.4.
If we had them, a better test might be Euro election polls, but data here continue to remain thin. What we have is not recent and the latest survey puts UKIP in third position, with 20 percent of the vote. Nevertheless, contradicting the evidence of his own polls, Joe Twyman, director of political research for
YouGov believes the Farage party will top the May election.
On what evidence we have, though - and relying strictly on evidence rather than sentiment or extrapolation - at best UKIP is flatlining. A more realistic view is that electoral support for the party is on the decline. There is certainly no evidence that it has gained anything from last week's debate.
For Farage and UKIP, therefore, there is everything to play for in tomorrow's debate, although anyone expecting a bleed-through into national polls may be disappointed.
