(For all polls on the London mayoral election go here)
After waiting months for a proper poll on the London mayoral election, two come along at once (I’ve resisted a bendy bus metaphor!). Firstly there is a new YouGov poll for London Tonight, and unlike the January YouGov poll with the sorry sample of under 400, this one has a respectable sample size of 1,000.
The topline figures, with changes from the last decent sized YouGov poll back in December, are JOHNSON 44%(-1), LIVINGSTONE 39%(-5), PADDICK 12%(+5).
While that’s good news for Boris, Ken Livingstone has hit back by releasing some of the Labour party’s private polling for the campaign by Ipsos MORI. Their polling has topline figures of Ken 37%, Boris 28%, Brian Paddick 14% and Sian Berry 3% taking all those expressing a preference and using only those certain to vote – the filter MORI use for their standing voting intention questions – LIVINGSTONE 38%, JOHNSON 35%, PADDICK 14%. Asked to pick just between Boris and Ken, Livingstone leads by 2 points. Corrected figures for this poll are now here.
Neither of these seem to have been officially released yet, so no news on fieldwork dates and so on.
UPDATE: On Livingstone’s website he is busy dismissing ICM’s recent survey for Porsche on the congestion charge by – with quite unbelievable chutzpah – referring to TfL’s “mystery poll”. Here’s the difference, whatever the sample size of the ICM poll, the full question order and wording are visible for all to see and judge if the questions are fair and just…
UPDATE 2: The YouGov poll was conducted between the 19th and 21st February. No news of when the MORI poll was done – they are working out exactly what data has entered the public domain before releasing the relevant tables.
UPDATE 3: And the MORI fieldwork was done between the 8th-12th of February, so about a week and a half earlier. In between the two polls Lee Jasper was suspended by Ken Livingstone, which did result in some negative publicity and could have damaged his ratings – though it is equally as likely that the difference between the two polls is down to the very different methodologies used, or simple random variation between different samples.
Filed under:
London,
MORI,
YouGov