More MOE

"Move along, there’s nothing to see. Yet."

Yesterday I pointed out how the polls had been remarkably stable during the campaign, despite talk of their ‘volatility’, once you allowed for the margin of error inherent in sampling. Up till then, all but one poll during the campaign had put the Conservatives on 37 +/-3, Labour on 30 +/-3.


Since then we’ve had three more national polls. YouGov had 41/32/18. ComRes had 35/29/21. And Harris had 36/27/23. Fairly obviously, one of these – the YouGov poll – doesn’t fit into that earlier pattern, because it has the Conservatives on 41.

But it’s still hardly evidence of any great shift. It just means that over the last week every poll has had the Conservatives on 38+/-3 (rather than 37) and every poll has still had Labour on 30+/-3. Indeed, this is true of every poll since the campaign began.

Move along, there’s nothing to see. Yet.

Professor Philip Cowley