Opinion polling for the next United Kingdom

general election
2 Poll results

In the run up to the next United Kingdom general election, various organisations carry out opinion polling to
gauge voting intention. Results of such polls are displayed
in this article. Most of the polling companies listed are
members of the British Polling Council (BPC) and abide
by its disclosure rules.

Poll results are listed in the table below in reverse chronological order. The highest percentage gure in each
polling survey is displayed in bold, and the background
shaded in the leading partys colour. The 'party lead'
column shows the percentage-point dierence between
the two parties with the highest gures. Throughout
the present parliament, rst and second place has without exception alternated between the Conservatives and
Labour. In the instance of a tie, no gure is shaded but
both are displayed in bold. The Liberal Democrats and
the UK Independence Party have tended to hold either
third or fourth place in each individual poll. The combined Green parties of England and Wales and Scotland
are consistently polling fth and have on occasions polled
fourth with some companies level with or ahead of the
Liberal Democrats. Included in the 'others column are
other smaller parties, the largest of which (by votes at the
2010 general election) are the British National Party, the
Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru. Detailed poll
results that break down 'others for some dates are available in a second table, below.

The date range for these opinion polls is from the previous
general election, held on 6 May 2010, to the present day.
Under xed-term legislation, the next general election is
scheduled to be held on 7 May 2015.
Most opinion polls cover only Great Britain (the UK
excluding Northern Ireland). Separate polls covering
Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are reported further below while polling of individual constituencies and
groups of them (such as groups of marginals) is covered
in a separate article.

Graphical summary

2.1 2014
2.2 2013
2.3 2012
2.4 2011
2.5 2010

15-day average trend line of poll results from 6 May 2010 to 7

November 2014, with each line corresponding to a political party.

Note: some polls in 2010 did not give an individual gure for
the UK Independence Party or the Greens. In these cases, the
percentage intending to vote Green and/or UKIP is included with
the 'others.

The chart shows the relative state of the parties from 13

May 2010 to the date the next election is held, with each
lines colour corresponding to a political party: blue for
the Conservative Party, red for the Labour Party, yellow for the Liberal Democrats and purple for the United 3 Scotland, Wales and Northern
Kingdom Independence Party. While not being shown,
Ireland
other parties such as the Greens have on occasion polled
higher than one or more of the parties represented. Each
dot represents a partys results from an opinion poll dis- Scotland and Wales additionally have mainstream nationalist parties, and Northern Ireland has a vastly dierent
played in the table below.
1

political system. These factors mean that the polls reported above do not give useful data about the political
situation in those countries. Of the 650 constituency seats
in the House of Commons, Scotland has 59, Wales has 40
and Northern Ireland has 18.

3.1

Scotland

3.2

Wales

3.3

Northern Ireland

Detailed poll results

The tables above show poll results just for the four largest
parties. Detailed poll results are given below. Often poll
companies publish a combined result for SNP and Plaid
Cymru, indicated by a merged cell below. Other cases of
Party results not being shown individually are included
in the Others column, with the individual partys box
remaining empty. Results showing <0.5% imply percentages ranging from 0.01% to 0.49%. 0.5% to 1.49% are
rounded to 1%.

Methodology

Each polling organisation uses slightly dierent methodology in their collection of data; a brief description of
each companys methods are as follows:
Angus Reid Public Opinion collect their
data through online internet surveys, and
demographically weight their data to be representative of the whole population in terms of age,
gender, social class, the region of the country
they live in and newspaper readership. Past vote
weighting is used, and is calculated separately for
respondents from Scotland and respondents from
England & Wales, whilst those saying they do not
know how they will vote are asked which party they
are leaning towards, and any responses to this are
used as a full response, whilst those still unsure
being discounted from the nal calculation of levels
of party support.[10]
ComRes uses both telephone interviews and online
surveys to collect their data, although all polls will
be conducted using one method exclusively. All respondents are weighted according to gender, age, social class, household tenure, work status, number of
cars owned and whether or not they have taken a
foreign holiday in the previous three years. Both
telephone and online polls are weighted according
to past vote in the last general election, whilst telephone polls also use data from the last 12 Com-

METHODOLOGY

Res telephone conducted opinion polls. ComRes

compensate for those respondents who says they
do not know by asking them instead which party
they most clearly identify with, whilst all respondents are weighted according to likelihood to vote
on a scale of one to ten, with respondents saying
their likelihood of voting is less than four being discounted entirely, and respondents saying their likelihood is more than ve being progressively weighted,
with a ve-out-of-ten likelihood being weighted as
half a response and a ten-out-of-ten likelihood being
weighted as one whole response.[11]
ICM also collect their data through telephone interviews, and also demographically weight their respondents according to their gender, age, social
class, household tenure, work status and the region
of the country they live in. They weight their respondents according to the levels of support a party
received in the previous general election and the last
25 ICM opinion polls, and if a past vote is given, this
is used to allocate a response to those who say they
do not know how they will vote, although such a response is counted as only half of one whole response.
ICM also weight their respondents as to how likely
they say they are to vote, with respondents who say
they are certain to vote given a higher weighting than
those who are not as certain, whilst if a respondent
did not vote at the previous general election, their
turnout weighting is automatically reduced to half
its value.[12]
Ipsos MORI collect their data through telephone
interviews, and weight their respondents to be demographically representative of gender, age, social
class, work status, work sector, household tenure
and the region of the country they live in. They
do not weight their data according to the way respondents voted at the previous general election, discount any respondents who say they do not know
how they will vote, and only include the responses
of people who says they are certain to vote in the nal calculation of levels of support for each party.[13]
Opinium surveys are conducted online via web interviewing, drawing a sample of responses from the
companys panel of around 30,000 people. This
sample is representative of the adult population of
Great Britain in the areas of age, gender, regional
location, working status and social grade, as according to the latest Oce for National Statistics data.
Responses from dierent demographic groups are
handled appropriately to compensate for dierential
response rates in these dierent groups.[14]
Populus: Populus conduct their surveys over the
telephone, and weight all respondents according to
gender, age, social class, household tenure, work status, the number of cars they own, and whether they
have taken a foreign holiday in the past three years,

3
to be representative of the whole electorate. Respondents are weighted according to their past vote
and the levels of support for each party recorded in
the previous 20 Populus opinion polls. Respondents
who say they do not know how they will vote are allocated according to how they voted at the last general election, albeit at a reduced weighting of 0.5 for
previous Conservative or Labour voters and 0.3 for
previous Liberal Democrat voters. All respondents
are also weighted according to how likely they are
to vote, with those certain to vote given the highest
weighting.[15]
Survation opinion polling is achieved through online surveys, and all data is weighted to represent the
wider population of the United Kingdom in terms
of gender, age, socio-economic group, religion, how
they have previously voted, and how likely a person
says they are to vote in the next general election. Respondents who are either undecided or refuse to state
how they would vote are excluded from the nal results, unless they have provided details of how they
have voted in the past, in which case, that information is used to adjust the results accordingly.[16]

carries out his eldwork, but the methodology is

similar to that used by Populus before they moved
to polling online.[21] He is not a BPC member but
has been invited to join.[22]

6 See also
Opinion polling in individual constituencies for the
next United Kingdom general election
European Parliament election, 2009 (United Kingdom)
European Parliament election, 2014 (United Kingdom)
List of political parties in the United Kingdom
List of United Kingdom by-elections (1979
present)
Opinion polling for the United Kingdom general
election, 2010

TNS-BMRB interview a representative sample of

7 References and notes
adults aged 18+. All interviews are conducted in respondents homes, although the voting intention data
is collected using self-completion methods. The Notes
data is weighted twice: rstly to match population
totals for age, sex, social grade, working status, pres- [1] Asked about political party support, not with reference to
a specic election.
ence of children, 2010 voting patterns and region;
and secondly, for voting intention questions only, an [2] Only stand in Scotland
additional 'likelihood-to-vote' weight is applied.[17]
[3] Only stand in Wales

YouGov collect their data through an online survey, and weight their respondents to be representa- [4] Polling organisations treat the two Green Parties in Great
Britain, the Green Party of England & Wales and the
tive of the population as a whole in terms of age,
Scottish Green Party, together
gender, social class, identication with a political
party, region of the country and newspaper read- [5] Unusually amongst polling companies, Survation report to
ership. They weight their respondents according to
one decimal place, and reported Con 30.8%, Lab 31.2%
how they voted in the previous general election in
order to achieve a sample that is reective of each P The dates when the eldwork for this poll was carried out
partys level of support at that election, whilst those is unknown, therefore the date of publication has been given.
respondents who say they do not know who they will
vote for are discounted from calculating levels of
References
support for each party.[18]
Lord Ashcroft commissions and publishes polls under his own name.[19] On 12 May 2014 he published
the rst in a series of opinion polls to be published
weekly up to the 2015 UK general election.[20]
These polls are carried out by telephone, and are
past-vote weighted with an allowance for false recall. They are also weighted for likelihood to vote,
with a proportion of Don't Knows reallocated to
how respondents said they voted at the 2010 general election. The main three parties (Conservative,
Labour, Liberal Democrat) are prompted for. Lord
Ashcroft does not disclose the organisation which

[1] ICM adjust for don't know/refusers by reallocating a proportion of those to the major party they tend to support.
Percentage for Greens is based on a table that does not
adjust for don't know/refusers.
[2] Michael Ashcroft adjusts for don't know/refusers by reallocating a proportion of those to the party they tend
to support. Before 2 Jun 2014 Ashcroft percentages for
Greens are based on a table that does not adjust for don't
know/refusers.
[3] 2013 local elections, BBC.
[4] 2012 local elections, BBC.

EXTERNAL LINKS

[5] 2011 local elections, BBC.

UK Polling Report Election Guide

[6] ICM adjust for don't know/refusers by reallocating a proportion of those to the major party they tend to support.
Percentage for UKIP and Greens is based on a table that
does not adjust for don't know/refusers.

ICM Polls

[7] It should be noted that BPIX is not a member of the

British Polling Council, unlike the other main pollsters
such as YouGov, ComRes, Populus, Ipsos MORI, and
ICM. Therefore, the full details of its polls are not subject to public disclosure.
[8] ICM adjust for don't know/refusers by reallocating a proportion of those to the major party they tend to support.
Percentages for SNP/Plaid Cymru/Greens/BNP are based
on a table that does not adjust for don't know/refusers.
[9] Michael Ashcroft adjusts for don't know/refusers by reallocating a proportion of those to the party they tend to
support. At this date percentages for Greens/BNP/Others
are based on a table that does not adjust for don't
know/refusers.
[10] Angus Reid Public Opinion Methodology. Angus Reid
Public Opinion. 2011-07-20. Retrieved 2011-07-26.
[11] Public Polling Methodology.
2011-07-26.

ComRes.

Retrieved

[12] July Poll for the Guardian. ICM Research. Retrieved

2011-07-26.
[13] Data Collection. Ipsos MORI. Retrieved 2011-07-26.
[14] Political Polling. Opinium Research LLP. Retrieved
2012-04-18.
[15] Populus sampling and weighting methodology. Populus.
Retrieved 2011-07-26.
[16] Survation Poll The Budget Aftermath For The Mail On
Sunday. Survation. Retrieved 2012-03-27.
[17] TNS BMBR Methodology. TNS BMBR. Retrieved
2012-12-17.
[18] Panel Methodology. YouGov. Retrieved 2011-07-26.
[19] About. Lord Ashcroft. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
[20] Tories lead rst weekly telephone poll. Lord Ashcroft.
Retrieved 2014-05-19.
[21] Ashcroft CON 34, LAB 32, LDEM 9, UKIP 15. Anthony Wells. Retrieved 2014-11-02.
[22] Minutes of the Annual General Meeting 2013. British
Polling Council. Retrieved 2014-05-19.

External links
Ipsos Mori archive of all pollsters polls
British Polling Council
Electoral Calculus

Populus Political Polls

YouGov Political Polls
ComRes Polls
Angus Reid Public Opinion
Lord Ashcroft Polls

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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