Looking at the trend in YouGov polls since mid-Sept it does seem that LAB has had 2-3 pc boost
Update : Labour lead at 9 – Latest YouGov/ The Sun results 28th October – Con 31%, Lab 40%, LD 9%, UKIP 12%; APP -28 http://t.co/xof1uRF0TJ
— YouGov (@YouGov) October 29, 2013
A year ago the party was in the 42%-44% range
The two great rules of polling analysis are focus on party shares not leads and always look at the trend.
This is what I’ve tried to do in the above chart focusing on the LAB share since Miliband’s conference speech pledge on energy prices. This has driven the political narrative since.
As can be seen from nearly seven weeks of polling LAB has edged up and a boost of 2-3% is being sustained. It should be said that in the period before the party had been very much under pressure and the trend had been downwards.
But before the red team gets too excited they should look at what was happening exactly a year ago.
- Throughout October 2012 LAB was never out of the 40s – in fact its lowest share was 41%. So there has been a decline which has mostly been down to seepage to UKIP.
Next week we will be just a year and a half from GE2015. There is still plenty of time for events to intervene and things to change.
Mike Smithson
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