YouGov Founder's Blog

A new YouGov poll for the Telegraph shows voting intentions, with changes from our last poll, of CON 39%(-2), LAB 29%(+2), LDEM 19%(+1). A two point change in Conservative and Labour support isn’t itself significant, but it fits into a wider pattern, with recent MORI and ICM polls also showing support for Labour increasing.

On a uniform swing these figures would leave the Conservatives just short of an overall majority, but while this is a much less comfortable position for the Conservatives than a 14 point lead, in reality I expect that it would still deliver them a majority. Polling results are projected into election results using a uniform national swing, but the Conservatives could out perform this if they manage a larger swing in the key marginal seats they need to win.

The Conservatives have very few winnable marginals in Scotland, and our polling shows they are doing much worse there. But if they do worse in one place, they must be doing better elsewhere to arrive at the topline figures. Alongside our national polling, we also carried out a poll of Lab-Con marginals in the north – the 32 Labour held seats that the Conservatives would need to win to secure an overall majority. We found voting intention in those seats to be CON 42%(+8), LAB 36%(-8), LDEM 12%(-5). This is the equivalent of an 8% swing to the Conservatives, compared to a swing of 6.5% in the nationwide poll – if marginals elsewhere behave like those in the North, this would deliver an easy Conservative majority.