“The Herald poll apparently showing Labour back in the lead surprised everyone, psephologists included, who had expected a continuation of the SNP winning streak. The polling organisation MRUK wasn’t one of the usual suspects, and the SNP insisted that there was something decidedly murky about their sampling technique. They had put the questions during March 23-25 but had then sat on them for a fortnight.”

perhaps they have their own doubts about the veracity of the information contained in the poll?

The SNP have been publicly dismissive of the MRUK poll, but the issues that seems to have made them privately relaxed ( certainly from the campaign people I know), are the ones regulars her will be fmiliar with.

1,000 isn’t a large sample, we don’t know the methodology, phone polls can be effected by te circle of silence ( it gives the Tories a low score), It’s a first poll so we can’t assess it for trend, it runs counter to almost everyone elses, they aren’t recalling nor do they seem to be filtering for previous voting to create a balance.

As ever of course it could be that all the other polls are wrong, but no one I know in the SNP believes that.

Please post what you find about the methodology I know i’ll be interested ( as will a few prominant people I know).

Peter

Poll was carried out by MRUK but detailed figures etc were not published.

The last ten days, worked for John Major against Neil Kinnock, but it never happened with Blair. The question is will the tactics being used by Labour this time work as they did before in 1999 and 2003, I have my doubts.

Personally I don’t think so a combination of anger at Labour, the limits of Parliaments powers, and the referendum effectively parking Independence for three years mean that people won’t be put off.

As to differential voting. If Greens, LibDems. and Tories with higher turnout vote tactically to hurt Labour then ifanything the SNP lead could go up.

It really is all to play for, but certainly the reaction I am getting out canvasing is that people think itis afeto vote SNP, and that post iraq no one believes a word Blair says.

As for Labours campaign, whether it be Local Income Tax or a referendum, they seem to think it’s a good idea to attack policies that all the polls show have 60% to 70% public support.

How dumb is that.

Peter.

I hadn’t looked at the details only the story, and you are right the 90% is way out of line.

I don’t know how it was conducted, so it could well be it was an on line poll without any filtering effectively with a self selecting panel.

However, that would explain the high SNP vote if it ment that the SNP was far more organised than everyone else, and it also shows a higher vote for the greens and the SSP.

I think a more probably outcome might be that it reflects people who are both politically active and have internet access.

I so a comment on a similiar effect with regards to blogging and on line oppinion in both Venezuela and Iran, where the media in the US and Europe were taken aback by election results.

One reason given was that they paid more attention to what they were seeing on the net than on the ground, and that had ment that they underestimated the impact that the unwired poor would have on the result.

So it may still have a limited validity in showing us how active and motivated the parties are in Edinburgh and indeed how likely they are to get their vote out.

If anyone knows how the 2,000 were selected I’d love to know.

Peter.

YouGov poll for the SNP, fieldwork 27-30 March, sample 1,064

The constituency vote (excl don’t know, won’t vote)
SNP 36%, Lab 27%, Lib 16%, Con 13%, Oth 8%.

Regional list vote (excl don’t know, won’t vote)
SNP 33%, Lab 26%, Con 14%, Lib 14%,Gre 7%, SSP 3%, Sol 1%, Oth 3%,

Based on WS this would give,
SNP 48, Lab 38, LibDem 19, Tory 15, SSP1, Green 8, Ind 0, Others 0.

Again the *% others in the consyituency vote includes some green and SSP votes that will go elsewhere so that isn’t that will effect the result, and the list independants will probably see at least one elected as might one of the minor parties.

I think the similar figures are on Peter Kellners column.

http://www.yougov.com/interactive/kellnerMain.asp?jID=3&aId=4723&sID=6&wID=0&UID=

Peter.