Polling organisation YouGov have announced that they are to change their weighting and sampling system for Scotland after a review of their methods suggested that they have been underestimating support for the SNP.
Company president Peter Kellner said:
“We have found that in Scotland, our party ID figures have not kept pace with the cumulative changes that have occurred since the SNP came to power in 2007.
“From this week, we are adjusting our sampling and weighting methods to take account of this. These will typically reduce Labour’s recorded share of support in Scotland by two-to-three percentages points and increase the SNP’s recorded share by a similar amount.”
Mr Kellner added:
“We have also recalculated recent voting intention surveys conducted in Scotland. These changes do not change the big picture: Labour has regained a substantial lead north of the border in recent months as support for the SNP has slipped; and, as it happens, these changes make little difference to any seat projection that are made applying uniform swings in Scotland.”
The changes will lead to an up to 6 percentage point ‘swing’ from Labour to the SNP on recent YouGov polls. The most recent YouGov Scottish poll for Westminster estimates a 15% lead for Labour over the SNP. However rival organisation Ipsos MORI recently placed the SNP within 2 points of Labour for the same Westminster election.
Meanwhile it is being reported that The Daily Mail have declined to publish a recent Scottish Westminster poll that showed the SNP with a seven point lead over Labour.
Holyrood magazine are reporting that the newspaper believed such figures would “arouse suspicion” that the results were that of a “rogue survey”. The online magazine reveals that the name of the paper that commissioned the poll was none other than The Daily Mail itself.