Blogs

With an explosion of different polling and forecasting methods in recent years, it can be hard to make sense of the noise. In this Bi_Focal, we take a deep dive into the four public MRPs published during the election campaign, analysing their differences and assessing how they compare to historical results.

A sizeable amount of the variation among pollsters stems from a somewhat existential approach to polling itself — are polls 'nowcasts' of the current moment in time, or are they forecasts of actual voting behaviour if a general election really were held today?

Labour’s lead over the Conservatives has a very wide range among pollsters, from 15 points (J.L. Partners) to 27 (YouGov). However, at this month’s local elections, the BBC’s Projected National Vote share pointed towards a single-figure lead for Keir Starmer’s party. So what explains these large gaps, and which source is closest to Labour’s ‘true’ lead?