There are two new voting intention polls in the Sunday papers, tackling the issue of measuring TIG support in different ways…
Deltapoll for the Mail on Sunday have standard voting intentions of CON 43%, LAB 36%, LDEM 6%, UKIP 5%. Respondents were then asked how they would vote if The Independent Group put up candidates at the next election – voting intention under those circumstances switches to CON 39% (four points lower), LAB 31%(five points lower), TIF 11%, LDEM 5%(one point lower). The implication is that the Independent Group are taking some support from both Labour and Conservative though, as we saw with the YouGov poll earlier in the week, it’s not necessarily as simple as a direct transfer – part of the difference may well be people saying don’t know. Fieldwork was between Thurs and Saturday, full results are here.
Opinium for the Observer meanwhile only asked their standard voting intention question, but have begun including TIG in that. This flags up an interesting dilemma for polling companies. The Independent Group are obviously not a political party. While the widespread expectation is that at some point in the future they will become a political party, they aren’t registered as one yet, and aren’t putting up candidates yet. This means that most polling companies are asking hypothetical questions about the level of support they would get if they did stand, but are not currently including them in standard voting questions.
Opinium however are offering them as a current option – presumably their thinking is that it’s only a matter of time before they register and if poll respondents’ intention is already to vote for them when they do, they should register it. The approach Opinium has taken will clearly be the correct way to do it once the TIG do evolve into a political party, the question is whether it’s too early to do it now. Either way, for what it’s worth Opinium’s first polling figures with TIG included as an option are CON 40%(+3), LAB 32%(-5), LDEM 5%(-3), TIG 6%(+6), UKIP 7%(nc). Fieldwork was Wednesday to Friday, and changes are from a week ago. Full results are here.
To be complete, as well as the SkyData and Survation polls I’ve already written about here, which showed TIG support at 10% and 8% respectively, there was also a YouGov poll midweek. That found standard topline figures of CON 41%, LAB 33%, LDEM 10% and hypothetical figures of CON 38%, LAB 26%, LDEM 7%, TIG 14% (full write up is here. Overall that means, depending on the different questions asked and approaches taken, the initial level of support for the TIG seems to be between 6% and 14%.