Looking At Populus Polls - And Others

If you have followed my blog for a while, then you will know that from time-to-time I look at the political opinion polls produced by You Gov.

I recently gave some details of how I analyse this, looking at the shifts in votes - e.g. how many people who voted for party X at the May 2010 general election plan to vote for party Y.

Now, YouGov are not the only polling company. Among others, there is Populus, which is now producing political opinion polls again. Looking at the timing of the last 3, it looks like there will be 2 a week - contrasting the 5 a week for YouGov.

Like YouGov, Populus splits Great Britain down into 5 areas, which more detailed share of the vote for these. Some are clear, some not. Scotland is, well, obviously Scotland; I assume the South East is London, South East England and Eastern England; Midlands is West Midlands and East Midlands; North England is North West England, Yorkshire & Humberside and North East England; while Wales & South West is presumably Wales and South West England. I outlined what I think the YouGov areas are a couple of months back.

With this, we can compare which areas the regions/nations are in:

Region/Nation	Populus	YouGov
Scotland	Scotland	Scotland
North West England	North England	North
Yorkshire & Humberside	North England	North
North East England	North England	North
Wales	Wales & South West	Midlands/Wales
West Midlands	Midlands	Midlands/Wales
East Midlands	Midlands	Midlands/Wales
Eastern England	South East	Rest of South
South West England	Wales & South West	Rest of South
South East England	South East	Rest of South
London	South East	London

By having the area defined differently, we should be able to pick up nuances.

There are 2 or 3 other polls that come out montly - what might be a reasonable thing to do is to each month look at a "poll of polls" that takes the average of each constituency's results and uses this to determine an overall result.