Opinion Polls – are they accurate? Post Script - Campaign for an Independent Britain

NEW ICM POLL CONFIRMS THE PROBLEM IN THE LAST ICM POLL

You may remember the problems I wrote about last week concerning the ICM poll of 13^th-15^th May.

In short, the Leave percentage for the over 65s was understated and the Remain percentage was overstated – massively. I also pointed this out to Martin Boon, the head of ICM.

We now have had a new ICM poll on 29 May showing, apparently, a dramatic swing to Leave, ending up with a 52-48 split in favour of leaving the EU.

Whoah! A lot of this ‘swing’ is actually reflective of a more realistic polling of the over 65 vote.

On 15^th May, this age group was polled as 95 Remain and 80 Leave. It is now a much more realistic 76 Remain and 113 Leave and that is the main reason for the ‘swing’.

There is one other interesting change. There has been a substantial fall in the Leave lead among 18-34 year olds (35-44 and 45-65 have been fairly static). Why? Maybe it is because they think the Remain side are taking them for fools.

The latest ICM poll has made big news in the last 24 hours. It was such ‘big news’ that shares on Wall Street fell; there was a fall in the pound vis-à-vis the dollar, and a surge of betting on Brexit.

In reality, there was indeed a slight trend towards Leave but the change in the 18-34 percentage needs to be treated with caution. Much of the ‘big swing’ was simply a correction of the absurd polling data in the over 65 vote on the 13-15 May poll, analysed in my last email on this subject.

We need not worry about Wall Street, currency traders or betting punters but there is one thing that is important. Our friends in Vote.Leave should not interpret the ICM poll change as a vindication of their ‘immigration’ publicity drive. It is not. (Immigration is very important but this is a referendum on EU membership not on immigration and not on the Single Market).

The critical voting group is still the comfortable Home Counties Conservative voters who are reasonably loyal to the party leadership and live in seats which are very safe in general elections.

We need 60% of the Conservative vote, preferably more.

We need to hammer home that voting for Remain is signing a blank cheque for more powers to be handed over to Brussels.