Don’t Watch The Latest UK Polls, Instead Watch The Trends

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

Here’s the 6 most recent Tory poll results: 40, 36, 34, 36, 41, 36. Is there a trend? Yes, you have to dig to find it.

It’s easy to see that Boris Johnson and the Tories have a lead. But is it 4% or 17%?

Is YouGov right or Opinium? What about Survation?

This is not the right way of looking at things. You can go mad watching these results seemingly jump all over the place.

Some of these pollsters are going to be way off the mark.

Theresa May was supposed to win in a blowout but she barely hung on.

Missing the Picture

In regards to Theresa May, nearly what everyone missed was the trend heading into election day.

While most of the polls had the Tories winning, the trends were decidedly moving towards Labour in the last couple weeks before the election.

That was a very ominous sign for the Tory party.

Had the election been a week later she may have lost. Had the election been a week earlier, she may not have needed DUP to survive.

Trends

What are the trends?

There seems to be a lot of give and take if you aimlessly follow the latest polls.

However, the trends are very clear if you plot by pollster.

Tory Party Poll Trends

Data for my charts is from Wikipedia.

The range of the most recent Tory polls is 34-41%.

All six of the pollsters have the Tory party gradually and consistently gaining strength.

Labour Party Poll Trends

The range the six most recent Labour polls is 21-29%.

Four of six polling organizations suggest support for Labour is stagnant. The other two say support for Labour is rising, but not as steeply as support for the Tories.

ComRes shows a rising trend for Labour, but it from October 10 and is thus very stale.

One bad print from ComRes will have 5 of 6 stagnant trends for Labour.

Clustering

• The six most recent polls for Labour average 24.17%
• The six most recent polls for Tories average 37.17%

That’s an average lead of 13%, easily enough for a Tory landslide.

Leave or Remain?

YouGov Poll Trends say people support Remain.

But check out another YouGov poll.

No Deal and No Corbyn

By a 48% to 35% margin, Britons would rather have No Deal and no Corbyn than Corbyn.

That poll is from August 17, 2019 and might easily be more skewed against Corbyn today.

My trend charts support that determination.

Electoral Calculus

Electoral Calculus had it this way in September.

“Our regular month-end poll of polls shows an average Conservative lead of seven per cent over Labour. This is just enough for a small majority in the House of Commons, which is the headline prediction above.”

Electoral Calculus October 30

“Prediction based on opinion polls from 01 Oct 2019 to 25 Oct 2019“

That is a stunning victory for Johnson even without a Brexit Party alliance.

National Polls

It’s important to not overemphasize support for Remain.

This is not a national election.

London would overwhelmingly vote Remain, but London business leaders certainly do not want Corbyn.

National polls don’t count in a first-past-the-post regional voting system. This is what Hillary Clinton found out in spades.

These Brexit trends can change at any time, but there is no particular reason to believe they will.

Like it or not, voters are getting more comfortable with Johnson, and Johnson has business on his side.