YouGov for Hope not Hate - 23-26 April 2019 & tracker

London4Europe Committee Member Michael Romberg works out what the opinion poll findings for the European Elections in London mean for seats. Tables 1 & 2 look at this poll; Tables 3 & 4 are a tracker for all London polls.

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.

Data Source for this survey: YouGov for Hope not Hate – fieldwork 23-26 April 2019.   649 replies in London, weighted by likelihood to vote and excluding don’t know/ won’t vote/ won’t say (36% of full sample)

TABLE 1: This table takes the opinion poll findings and turns them into seats using the D’Hondt method (read more about that here). Seats won in each round are shown in bold. Poll numbers are then adjusted for subsequent rounds of seat allocation.

Notes

Brex = Farage’s Brexit Party

Ch = Change UK, formerly The Independent Group of MPs

Grn = Green Party

LD = Liberal Democrats

O = other

DK = don’t know/ won’t say/ won’t vote/ refuse to answer

Notes

• Because of working on rounded numbers allocation of seats 6 & 7 may be the wrong way round, but does not matter for the total
• Because of working on rounded numbers I cannot be certain that the last seat should go to the Brexit Party.

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 the whole poll is 2,000 or so; think how much smaller the London number is than that.

TABLE 2: this table works out a counterfactual allocation of seats if the Remain parties had joined on a single platform. The calculation assumes that the vote for the platform would be the sum of the votes for the individual parties. That would not be the case in real life – there are arguments for saying that a platform might do better or that it would do worse than the sum of the parties.

Remain = sum of poll results for Change UK, Green and Liberal Democrats

ADDITIONAL CAVEAT

• My calculations are on rounded numbers and that might introduce an error when results are close.
• In particular it is not possible to say for sure that the 8th seat should go to the Brexit Party

TRACKERS

Some general points

• 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.
• These polls have all come before Labour's 2 May National Executive Committee meeting which is to decide  Labour's policy for the European Parliament elections. There have been polls saying that a failure to commit to a confirmatory referendum on any Brexit deal would cost Labour a huge number of votes. Over eighty MPs and MEPs - including London4Europe President Catherine West MP - have written to the NEC calling for a referendum on any deal. 

TABLE 3: Vote tracker. This table looks at the share of the vote in successive opinion polls.

Notes

• 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. Allocation of votes to Total Brexit/ Remain is based on parties not individuals.
• Party 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. 
• 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.

ADDITIONAL CAVEATS

• 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 4: Seat tracker. This table looks at the seat allocation implied by successive opinion polls.

The London4Europe blogs page is edited by Nick Hopkinson, Vice-Chair. Views expressed in articles on this page reflect the views of the author and not necessarily of London4Europe.