Tomorrow’s Times has a poll of Conservative party members about the forthcoming leadership election, showing Theresa May ahead of the supposed favourite, Boris Johnson. Asked who would they would prefer as party leader May is on 36% to Johnson’s 27% (Andrea Leadsom and Stephen Crabb are both on 7%, Liam Fox is on 4%). Party members only actually get to vote on the final two candidates of course, and in a straight contest between Theresa May and Boris Johnson current support stands at May 55%, Johnson 38% – a seventeen point lead for May. The full tables are here.

Theresa May appears to have had a good EU referendum campaign or at least, by standing a little aside from it her reputation has survived intact while most other Tory politicians have been damaged. When YouGov asked Tory members if they had positive or negative impressions of various politicians 72% were positive about May, up 4 from before the referendum. In contrast Boris Johnson was at 58% (down 18 since the referendum), Gove 63% (down 6), Sajid Javid 42% (down 8), IDS 54% (down 9), George Osborne 47% (down 21). She is also one of relatively few figures who is positively regarded by both those members who supported remain and those members who supported leave.

Part of the turnaround appears to be the perception that Theresa May is better placed to unite the party – 64% of party members said this was one of the most important considerations (up twenty points since Febrary) and May has a thirty point lead over Johnson on who would be better able to unite the party (46% to 16%). Given the current political and economic situation, she also has a lead over Johnson on ability to handle a crisis (49% to 18%), taking tough decisions (46% to 18%) and negotiating with Europe (32% to 22%).

Boris Johnson’s own strengths are still apparent though – he is seen as by far the best media performer and the candidate who best understands how to win an election. Both he and Stephen Crabb are ahead of Theresa May on who party members think would be most in touch with ordinary people. While the poll shows him losing in a May -vs- Johnson run off, they still suggest Boris would win in a run-off against Stephen Crabb (by 54% to 31%) or Liam Fox (by 52% to 29%).

This is, of course, a very early poll – it was conducted between Monday and Wednesday, so before nominations opened or the final list of candidates was confirmed. Party members don’t yet know what pledges and promises the candidates will make, what their detailed stance will be on Europe or other key issues. For less well known candidates like Stephen Crabb many members won’t know much about them at all. As the race begins though, Theresa May has the early advantage.

If I were TNS or Opinium I would be rather annoyed today. Looking through social media, twitter and so forth there are lots of comments about the polls all being wrong and it being a terrible night for the pollsters, etc, etc. Both TNS and Opinium had final call figures of REMAIN 49%, LEAVE 51% – within a point of the actual result. Far from being a terrible night, they got it pretty much spot on, and should be getting congratulated.

The last general election was a disaster for all the pollsters. Last night wasn’t the same at all, it was a very bad result for some pollsters, but other companies did very well. Below is a chart of the Leave lead in the final results of all the pollsters who did a poll in the last week or so

The polls in blue were conducted online, the polls in orange were conducted by telephone. Note that ORB and Survation’s fieldwork both finished a few days before the referendum, so one cannot rule out a change in support in the days between their fieldwork and the vote itself. Disappointingly for me personally YouGov’s final poll had Remain ahead, albeit, only by two points. Unlike in May 2015 though I’ve a good idea of what went wrong (the turnout model we used for the poll weighted down people who didn’t vote at the last general election, when in reality turnout ended up being higher than the last general election), which is something that can be worked on.

During much of the campaign discussion of polls focused on the gap between telephone and online polls. The division is, as ever, really not as simple as that – Populus showed the largest Remain lead and it was conducted online, until they stopped polling a few weeks from the referendum ICM’s telephone polls were showing figures as Leave as their online polls. However, the general trend was clear – online polls tended to show a closer race than telephone polls; online polls tended to show it neck-and-neck, telephone polls tended to show Remain clearly ahead.

Many media commentators bought into the view that phone polls were “better” in some way, and should carry more weight than online polls (a debate I sought to avoid as much as possible, as there really wasn’t good evidence either way). I suspect this has played into the perception that the polls as a whole were wrong. If you’ve spent the last few months focusing on the polls showing a solid leave lead, and playing down the polls showing a neck-and-neck race, then you’d have been very surprised by last night.

The gap between online and phone narrowed during the campaign, and that was largely due to changes in online polls. The debate about the gap between phone and online polls has focused largely on potential differences in sampling – studies like that of Matt Singh and Populus found that people gave different answers to questions on things like immigration and national identity in online and telephone polls, that people in online sample seemed to be less socially liberal than people in telephone samples. In response several online pollsters adopted things like attitudinal weights to make their samples more like phone polls… perhaps, in hindsight, it should have been the other way around.

Since the error in the polls in 2015 I’ve said that the problems won’t be solved overnight. Pollsters are experimenting with different methods. Some of those things will work, some will not – it is a learning process. The record of polls conducted online is getting more promising – the performance of the mostly online polls at the May elections was mostly good, and most of the online polls for the EU referendum were either good, or at least only a few points out. While the problems of 2015 are probably not entirely cured yet, online companies are showing clear progress, for some phone polls there is clearly still work to be done.

Two more polls have been released during today, both showing the race essentially neck and neck.

Survation have released their final EU telephone poll for IG Group (not sure if that’s their final poll for the referendum itself, or just the final one for IG). Topline figures with changes from their weekend poll are are REMAIN 45%(nc), LEAVE 44%(+2), Undecided 11%(-2). Full tabs are here.

Surveymonkey also released new online figures this morning (for those unfamiliar with Surveymonkey as pollsters, I wrote about them here). Their topline figures in the new poll, conducted Friday-Monday are REMAIN 48%, LEAVE 49%. Changes are from their poll last week.

I don’t think any polls are due in tomorrow morning’s papers, most of the remaining final calls will presumably be showing up tomorrow afternoon or evening.

Finally a note about the ORB poll this morning. As regular readers will know, ORB figures have been a little confusing over the campaign – they have published two sets of figures, one for those 10/10 certain to vote, one for all voters. ORB have regarded the latter as their main figure, but the Telegraph have focused on the former. For their final call though ORB have been much clearer and put up an explanation on their site, with final projections of REMAIN 54%, LEAVE 46% – based on those certain to vote, and an assumption that the remaining don’t knows will split 3 to 1 in favour of Remain.