Survation are the newest British Polling Council member. We’re nimble and like to think we’re innovative and lucky enough to be able to draw on the experience of statisticians trained by the likes of nationally reknowned British Psephologists such as Colin Ralling.

One thing on our minds recently is our realisation that almost all opinion polling companies of note ask their voting intention question, in the following format;

“If there was a general election tomorrow, would you vote Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat or some other party?”.

We think that this automatically biases the poll in favour of those three prompted parties to the detriment (or not) of the “others” – a growing group –  especially if that party might not be viewed as a true “national” party vying for your vote at the 2015 parliamentary ballot box such at The Green Party or UKIP.

In our most recent online poll for this Sunday’s The Daily Star Sunday (page 4) on the public’s attitude’s attitude to industrial action, the headline voting intention has UKIP on 11%, just one point behind the Liberal Democrats. Carried out online, the party appear to have peeled off one in six Conservative voters from the 2010 General Election.

In fact, before the adjustment for past voting behaviour UKIP were slightly ahead of the Liberal Democrats. The Green Party too, were around 2x our previous nationally represented poll  for UNITE which was telephone based and entirely unprompted.

In this new survey we listed all parties in the the order of votes received in the 2010 General Election while randomising the top FOUR parties to the survey taker to avoid a common pitfall of online surveys – eg clicking the top answer.

The Headline numbers were  Labour 34% Conservatives 32%, Lib Dems 12% UKIP 11% Others 11%.

“Others” broke down as SNP 4%, The Green Party 4%, The BNP 2% Plaid Cymru 1%

UKIP for those interested has garnered the support of 16% of Conservative voters in 2010, 8% of Lib Dems and 2% of Labour voters.

Full crosstabs are now available on the following link;  Look out for coverage detail also available at Britain Votes.

Best,

Damian Lyons Lowe

CEO
Survation Ltd
damian.lyonslowe@survation.com