
Angus Reid show the Tory lead at 17
After the six point lead from Ipsos MORI, we now have a 17 point lead from Angus Reid. The topline figures, as I mentioned in my brief post below, are CON 39%(+1), LAB 22%(-2), LDEM 21%(+1). Others are unchanged on 18%. The poll was conducted over the weekend, so it is the first proper post-Queens speech poll.
The changes from Angus Reid’s last poll are all quite minor, showing a small shift away from Labour but nothing to get excited about. It does, of course, contrast sharply with MORI’s poll, particularly in terms of the level of Labour support.
Angus Reid are just entering UK polling so we don’t have a long track record to judge them by, but looking at their methodology I would expect them to have a tendency to show higher levels of Conservative and Lib Dem support and lower Labour support. I mentioned in my posts on MORI about “false recall”, people’s tendency to inaccurately report how they actually voted in 2005, and that ICM, Populus and ComRes all factor this into their weighting targets. AngusReid do not, implying no false recall at all, and the effect of this is that they weight the Conservatives and Lib Dems slightly higher and Labour slightly lower (though before people get carried away, it is pretty minor). From their three UK polls so far, they also seem to have a tendency to report significantly higher levels of support for minor parties than any of the other pollsters (though ComRes showed a similar figure in their last poll) – I can see no obvious methodological reason to explain the difference.
The bottom line is that on the short track record and methodology details we have I’d expect Angus Reid to show Labour a bit lower than companies like ICM and YouGov, so this poll is pretty much in line with the average Conservative lead still being somewhere around 13 or 14 points.
UPDATE: Forgot to say, we are also due a ComRes poll for the Independent… but not tonight. Presumably we can expect it later in the week.