The end of the week, and a couple of polls that have come out over the last few days.

• Firstly Ipsos MORI have released their quarterly monitor on Scottish public opinion. Holyrood constituency voting intention stands at CON 16%(+3), LAB 36%(+1), LDEM 8%(+1), SNP 39%(-4). Voting intention in the referendum on Scottish Independence stands at YES 31%(-3), NO 59%(+4). Full tabs are here, and there is some commentary from Bob Worcester here
• On the subject of Scottish polls, Lord Ashcroft has done some polling on attitudes to nuclear weapons in Scotland here. His polling has voting intentions in the Independence referendum at YES 30%, NO 56%, similar to the MORI poll – Ashcroft’s commentary on the nuclear weapon results is here.
• Populus have been doing a weekly poll asking people – unprompted – what news stories they have noticed in the last week. I love questions like this, not for when they show a story has been noticed (for example, the budget is noticed by a very high proportion of people, hence why it changes votes so much) but for the way it sometimes underlines how little impact a story has on normal people. Hence this week 33% of people mentioned the Ohio kidnaps, 9% Alex Ferguson’s retirement, just 3% the Queen’s speech.
• There is a big chunk of analysis here from Peter Kellner for Progress magazine, looking at the challenge facing Labour and including new polling on how people see Labour and the Conservative party.
• And finally, this morning’s YouGov poll for the Sun has topline voting intention figures of CON 30%, LAB 39%, LDEM 10%, UKIP 14%. Full tabs here. For people who are interested in that sort of thing, there are also some questions about Alex Ferguson here.

Or perhaps more accurately, a round up of polling bits and bobs that I’ve missed over the last week or two!

The BBC

There has been various polling on the BBC and the Jimmy Savile affair, most of it generally damning. Of particular note though is this poll from ComRes, who rather than asking whether the scandal had changed respondents’ opinions managed to dig out some questions from a poll they did for Newsnight back in 2009 to repeat. 62% of people agreed that the BBC was an institution we should be proud of, down from 76% in 2009. 45% of people thought the BBC was trustworthy, down from 62% in 2009. Obviously with a three year space we cannot assume that the drop is linked in anyway to the Savile affair, there could be many causes over the last three years, but either way it is a sharp drop in public regard of the BBC.

Scotland

There have been several polls on Scottish Independence over the last month. I mentioned the Ipsos MORI quarterly Scottish monitor, but there have also been polls by Panelbase (who are a member of the British Polling Council, but seem to be far from pro-active when it comes to publishing tables! Thanks to Roger Mexico for finally wringing some tabs from them) and two from YouGov that had referendum questions, one for the Better Together campaign and one for The Courier.

Ipsos MORI/Times (amongst those certain to vote) – YES 30%, NO 58%, DK 12%
Panelbase/Sunday Times (amongst those likely to vote in Scot Parliament elections) – YES 37%, NO 45%, DK 17%
YouGov/Better Together (all voters) – YES 30%, NO 56%, DK/WNV 14%
YouGov/The Courier (all voters?) – YES 29%, NO 55%, DK 14%

Party leaders

As well as voting intention this month’s Ipsos MORI poll included their tracker on whether people like the the main parties, the party leader, both or neither, a question I’ve written about in the past. 41% of people say they like David Cameron, down from 47% when MORI last asked the question in January 2011. In comparison 35% of people like the Conservative party (down marginally from 37%), meaning that David Cameron is still a positive for his party, out performing them by 6 points (down from a 9 point advantage in 2011). In comparison 37% of people like Ed Miliband, hardly changed from the 36% who liked him in 2011. 51% of people like the Labour party, up more substantially from 45% in 2011. This means Miliband trails behind the Labour party by 14 points (up from an 11 point gap in 2011).

Police Commissioner elections

Also from Ipsos MORI was this curious poll of voting intentions in the Police Commissioner elections. The quoted headline figures were Lab 16%, Con 8%, LD 4%, Others 3%, Independent candidates 30%, Wouldn’t vote 27%, Don’t know 11%. MORI normally take the approach of only including respondents who say they are 10/10 certain to vote, but in this case only 15% of people said they were certain to vote, and a sample size of about 150 people would be of no use to man nor beast.

I am dubious about the results anyway – polling contests where there are lots of independent candidates who may, or may not, have a chance of doing well is a difficult task. People invariably tell pollsters that they would like to vote for Independent candidates, and invariably fail to do so when actually given the chance – if you just put on a generic “A candidate that is not representing a political party” people tend to imagine some idealised Independent candidate who agrees with them, rather than the somewhat idiosyncratic sorts who actually stand as independents. Time will tell, but I sincerely doubt that independent candidates will get 50% of the poll in the police elections. Given the limited number of constituencies and the uneven pattern of parties contesting them, I think this may be a contest that would be best polled by asking people which county they live in and giving them a list of the actual local candidates to choose from. The expected low turnout however still makes it a tricky challenge to poll.