Polls at 30 April 2019

London4Europe Committee Member Michael Romberg works out what the opinion poll findings for the European Elections in London mean for seats in a tracker for all polls published so far with a London analysis.

Remember: it’s just a poll – a snapshot that comes with a significant margin of error particularly so when you are looking at a small or very small subset of a poll, as these London figures are.

You can look at a UK/ GB level tracker graph on the National Centre for Social Research's WhatUKthinks website here. Wikipedia also has a table of results for UK/GB opinion polls and a tracker graph with a slightly different selection of polls. 

Some initial indicative conclusions based on the London polls so far:

• Chart 1/ Table 1: Results are quite volatile. That reflects both the small sample size - London is just a subset of the overall poll and so numbers are much less reliable than UK/GB level data. The volatility also reflects the appearance of two new parties and that we have not yet had the UK manifestos.
• Table 1: The Brexit party has replaced UKIP as the leading party focussed purely on Brexit. If the position continues, then UKIP look unlikely to obtain a seat.
• Charts 2 & 2A: There is no clear leader amongst Change UK, Green and Liberal Democrat for the vote that prioritises Remain. Change UK has obviously risen in the polls as its existence enters public consciousness but it is too early to tell whether that level of increase will be sustained especially after the local government elections.
• Both Conservative and Labour are attracting significant Remain votes. 
• Table 1: "Other" parties are not reaching the 9-10% or so that they need to win a seat in London. However, when scrabbling for 8th place, differences in votes can be quite small. So votes cast for UKIP and "other" parties rather than one of the top six parties might make a difference to the seats won by the top six parties.
• Chart 3: There is a clear trend for falling vote shares for the Brexit parties (Brexit, UKIP, Conservative, Labour) and a rising trend for Remain parties (Change, Green, Liberal Democrat). That may reflect  that respondents to opinion polls are focussing on these being European Parliament elections rather than Westminster elections. 

CHART 1: Vote Tracker

CHART 2: Vote Tracker for Remain parties (same information as in Chart 1 - just focused on these three parties and larger scale, for the benefit of those who wish to vote tactically)

CHART 2A: Vote Tracker for Remain parties (only polls that asked about all three parties). Note that some of those polls were taken before the 23 April launch of Change UK's European elections campaign  (29 March - applied to be registered as a party; 16 April: approved as a party). Trendlines calculated by Excel. The calculation ignores that the time interval between polls is not constant. 

CHART 3: Vote Tracker showing the total Brexit vote (Brexit Party, UKIP, Conservative, Labour) and the total Remain vote (Change UK, Green, Liberal Democrat). Other is excluded. The trend lines have been calculated by Excel. The calculation ignores that the interval between polls is not constant.

TABLE 1: Vote tracker. This table looks at the share of the vote in successive opinion polls.

Notes

• Brexit = Farage’s Brexit Party
• Change UK, formerly The Independent Group of MPs
• LD = Liberal Democrats
• TOTAL BREXIT = sum of Brexit Party, UKIP, Conservatives and Labour
• TOTAL REMAIN = sum of Change UK, Green and Liberal Democrats
• "Other" is excluded from these two totals.
• Totals do not always sum to 100 due to rounding.
• The allocation of parties to Brexit/ Remain will be reviewed once the manifestos have been published or the situation is otherwise changed.
• Basis of allocation of Labour to Brexit: for example: 2017 general election manifesto; Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to 2018 party conference. The famous 2018 conference resolution only rejects a Conservative deal that fails to meet Labour’s six tests and no-deal; it does not reject Brexit absolutely.
• Note that individual MEP candidates do not necessarily subscribe to their party’s stance on Brexit. This caveat probably only applies to the Conservative and Labour parties. We have published information on the Brexit stance of individual candidates here. Allocation of votes to Total Brexit/ Remain is based on parties not individuals.
• Party MPs, members, supporters and voters do not necessarily share their party's position on Brexit. Moreover, in elections people vote on many issues, not just Brexit. So, especially with Conservative and Labour votes, the extent to which the elections should be taken to be a proxy referendum is limited. 
• For both of the main parties there are organisations campaigning to change their party's policy on Brexit. You can read up about them here in our blog and find their addresses so that you can join them. 
• You can find the individual data for each previous poll with calculations and a link to the source on the latest blogs page.
• where individual tables included don't know/ won't say/ won't vote as a separate category, they have been taken out in the tracker table.

Some general points

• In the early polls, respondents may not have given much thought to these being European Parliament (as opposed to Westminster)  elections.
• At the time of the first polls the Brexit Party and Change UK had not been founded. Then they were rumoured. Then announced, then  launched.
• Polls before Labour's 30 April National Executive Committee meeting are before the confirmation of Labour's policy for the European Parliament elections.
• Polls before the 2 May local elections do not take into account the results of the elections or the reactions to those results.

CAVEATS

• It’s a poll. A snapshot in time. People’s views change. If “don’t know/ won’t say” is large, then their views could swamp small differences between parties once they decide.
• European elections normally have low turnout. Differential turnout amongst supporters of different parties could affect the result compared with a poll. Different polling companies have different methodologies for adjusting for turnout.
• The definition of “London” in the poll may not match the London constituency for the election.
• Polls come with a margin of error. On the highest level figures asking a question of the whole sample a rule of thumb is that polls come with a margin of +/- 3 percentage points (so 45% think this might be anything in the range 42%-48%). London figures are normally a subset of the poll so the margin of error is larger. A good sample size for a whole poll would be 2,000 or so; think how much smaller the London number is than that.
• My calculations are on rounded numbers and that might introduce an error when results are close.
• Different companies use different methodologies. So polls asked by different companies are not wholly comparable.
• Small differences between polls do not tell you anything because of methodological differences and the margin of error which is quite large because the London sample is a small subset of the total sample.
• Unusual results in a single poll do not tell you anything because the poll might be an outlier. Wait to see whether the effect is sustained.

TABLE 2: Seat tracker. This table looks at the seat allocation implied by successive opinion polls. Seats have been allocated using the D'Hondt formula. You can read up how that works here. You can look at the individual calculations with links to sources in a series of individual blogs with the title "Polls into seats" in the latest blogs section of the website.

Views expressed in articles on this page reflect the views of the author and not necessarily of London4Europe.