Leave edge into the lead in new Survey Monkey poll

Hot on the heels of YouGov, we now have more apparent evidence that the tragic murder of Jo Cox has not affected public opinion on the EU referendum.  Today's new Survey Monkey poll was conducted entirely after the tragedy, and although the one-point increase in the Leave vote isn't statistically significant, there's certainly no sign of the swing back to Remain that many people seemed to be accepting as an established fact yesterday.

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union? (Survey Monkey, 17th-20th June)

Remain 48% (n/c)

Leave 49% (+1)

Like YouGov, this is an online poll, so there remains the possibility that phone polls will detect a pro-Remain swing that online firms can't.  The Survation poll at the weekend (which so far is the only phone poll to be entirely conducted after Ms Cox's death) showed changes that were consistent with that theory, but they were also perfectly consistent with a normal reversion to the mean after an unusually good poll for Leave last time around.  The next phone poll (which I gather is expected to be another Survation poll in a matter of minutes from now) could tell us quite a lot.

UPDATE : And right on cue, here is the Survation phone poll -

Remain 45% (n/c)
Leave 44% (+2)

Again, the improvement for Leave is not statistically significant, but we now have reasonably compelling evidence from a series of polls (including both online and phone polls) that there has not been a substantial drift towards Remain in recent days.  So the Leave campaign are entitled to breathe an enormous sigh of relief - although opinions differ on whether their current position is strong enough to withstand what may be coming their way over the next 48 hours, I don't see how anyone can seriously deny that they are very much still in the game.

One detail from the Survation poll that will be of some concern to the Remain campaign is that undecided voters don't break for Remain when pressed - they're essentially split down the middle.  YouGov last night did find that the undecideds were slightly more inclined towards Remain, but even if those people had been added into the headline figures, Leave would still have had a very slender advantage.

We've heard a lot about the similarities between this referendum and the indyref, but given the closeness of the race it's worth reminding ourselves of one of the crucial differences.  In September 2014, it always seemed likely that any sort of differential turnout was going to favour the No campaign.  They were doing better among both older voters and affluent voters - two demographics that are disproportionately likely to drag themselves to the polling station.  This time it's a much more mixed picture - older voters have consistently shown themselves to be far more likely to vote Leave, while the affluent are backing Remain.  Those factors may cancel each other out, although if anything the rumours about how the postal voting is going suggest it's conceivable that Leave could even enjoy a net benefit from differential turnout.  So certain commentators may be barking up the wrong tree when they point to the divergence between the final indyref polls and the actual result, and suggest that the current polls are bound to be underestimating Remain for that reason.

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SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS

50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE :

Remain 45.5% (+0.1)
Leave 45.8% (n/c)

ONLINE AVERAGE :

Remain 44.1% (+0.6)
Leave 46.1% (+0.4)

TELEPHONE AVERAGE :

Remain 46.8% (-0.4)
Leave 45.5% (-0.3)

(The Poll of Polls takes account of all polls that were conducted at least partly within the last seven days. The online average is based on seven polls - three from YouGov, two from Survey Monkey, one from Opinium and one from BMG. The telephone average is based on six polls - three from Survation, one from ORB, one from BMG and one from Ipsos-Mori.)