Tonight we got two further opinon polls, both of which were conducted entirely after Thursday night's leaders debate. Polling on bank holidays runs the risk of giving odd results, although there's nothing particularly odd about today's. YouGov, the fieldwork for which started on Friday morning (and partly overlapped the breaking of the "Nickileaks" story) showed the Lib Dems gaining at the expense of Labour and the Tories.
YouGov/Times: CON 34 (-3) LAB 33 (-2) LIB 10 (+3) UKIP 13 (+1) GRN 4 (-1) Fieldwork 3rd-4th Cleggmania 2? Daily roundup to follow! #GE2015
— NumbrCrunchrPolitics (@NCPoliticsUK) April 4, 2015
YouGov also found both Miliband and Cameron gaining personally:
YouGov/Times has Cameron and Miliband both gaining 3 points on NET approval, Cameron now +1, Miliband now -26 (via @ShippersUnbound) #GE2015
— NumbrCrunchrPolitics (@NCPoliticsUK) April 4, 2015
Opinium's weekly poll for the Observer showed:
Opinium/Observer CON 33 (-1) LAB 33 (=) LIB 7 (-1) UKIP 14 (+1) GRN 7 (=) Fieldwork 2nd-3rd POST DEBATE Writeup http://t.co/h2nMyHHdo4
— NumbrCrunchrPolitics (@NCPoliticsUK) April 4, 2015
As Anthony Wells points out, the Opinium/Observer changes versus their previous poll include BOTH leaders events. Farage was the biggest gainer, though all four leaders that Opinium ask about were higher than last week:
Opinium/Observer GROSS approval ratings: DC 43 (+1) EM 29 (+3) NC 21 (+5) NF 32 (+8) Chgs over BOTH leaders events. Tiny compared to 2010
— NumbrCrunchrPolitics (@NCPoliticsUK) April 4, 2015
Among Opinium’s panel, 58% said that they watched the debate, equivalent to about 26 million voters (compared with the actual BARB figures of 7.4 million):
58% of Opinium's respondents say they watched the debate BUT credit to them for asking – it didn't vary much by party pic.twitter.com/4VjKn3xhZH
— NumbrCrunchrPolitics (@NCPoliticsUK) April 4, 2015
But credit to them for putting the question in – in all likelihood, this is a problem that all pollsters have, and quite likely not just online, given how low telephone poll response rates have fallen. Given this, the changes are likely to have been even smaller in reality. Thus far it seems that the debate that had no clear winner, had no clear impact, either.
In seat polling, tomorrow’s Mail on Sunday has a front page headline about a leaked private poll of Thanet South. This makes the front-page presumably because it shows a party leader trailing in his own seat, but as I’ve written before, private polling happens all the time, and all but the most favourable are usually buried. (Update 22:20: the Mail reports the figures as CON 31, UKIP 30, LAB 29).
Mail have seen a leaked private poll showing CON leading in Thanet South, UKIP second, LAB close third (Via @SkyNews) pic.twitter.com/SqRmz0SB7X
— NumbrCrunchrPolitics (@NCPoliticsUK) April 4, 2015
And finally:
Candidate: "So can I ask how you normally vote?" Voter :"I usually go to the polling station" #GE2015
— NumbrCrunchrPolitics (@NCPoliticsUK) April 4, 2015
Tomorrow could be the first day in a couple of weeks that no polls are released, but then there might be a surprise. In any case, I’ll post additional analysis of YouGov once the tables are out.