Election Eve : Polling Roundup

We're midway through the barrel-load of GB-wide polls we're going to see tonight, so I'll use this post for rolling updates.  So far we've only seen three of the most Tory-friendly pollsters, and the picture they've been painting is one of stability -

* ICM have the Tory lead edging up 1% to 12%, but that could well just be margin of error noise.  It's also only 1% better than the lowest Tory lead ICM have reported at any point during the campaign.

ICM Scottish subsample : SNP 47%, Conservatives 30%, Labour 21%, Liberal Democrats 2%

* ComRes have the Tory lead falling from 12% to 10%, which could also be margin of error noise - but on the other hand it may be more significant than that, because 10% is the lowest lead ComRes have reported so far.

ComRes Scottish subsample : SNP 45%, Conservatives 27%, Labour 16%, Liberal Democrats 9%

* Panelbase show the gap steady at 8%, which means the Tories have failed to reverse the big drop in the last poll.  It's hard to make a meaningful comparison with the Panelbase polls in the early part of the campaign, because the firm's methodology was overhauled a couple of weeks ago to make it more similar to ComRes and ICM (which automatically made it more Tory-friendly).  However, it seems likely that if the new methodology had been used throughout, the Tory lead would never have been lower than it is now.

Panelbase Scottish subsample : SNP 40%, Conservatives 30%, Labour 24%, Liberal Democrats 4%

UPDATE : Here comes more...

* Kantar/TNS have a potentially significant poll showing the Tory lead cut in half from 10% to 5%.  That may exaggerate the trend because the previous poll from the firm showed a slight increase in the Tory lead, but nevertheless 5% is comfortably the lowest gap they've reported so far, and arguably moves the race into hung parliament territory.  Some of the fieldwork is a little out of date, though - although the poll concluded today, it's been running for a full week.

Kantar/TNS Scottish subsample : SNP 38%, Labour 31%, Conservatives 21%, Liberal Democrats 7%  (Note : This is a very rough estimate based on the raw numbers in the datasets, and doesn't take turnout weighting into account.)

* YouGov, which in recent weeks has become regarded as one of the most Labour-friendly pollsters, has unexpectedly shown the Tory lead jumping back up from 4% to 7%.  That's a bolt from the blue, because this afternoon's update of the YouGov projection model continued to show a 4% gap in the popular vote.  The fieldwork for the new poll is probably very up-to-date, so we may be looking at the first evidence of a late and decisive swing away from Labour...or it may be meaningless noise caused by random sampling variation. (Update : It turns out YouGov have made methodological changes for this poll, so that may be the real explanation.)

YouGov Scottish subsample : SNP 41%, Conservatives 28%, Labour 22%, Liberal Democrats 7%

* For what it's worth, some firm I've never heard of called Qriously is actually putting Labour ahead by around 3%.  The poll is being billed as "the first poll of the campaign to show a Labour lead", but as this firm are presumably very inexperienced in the field of political polling, a large helping of scepticism is warranted.  It's highly unlikely we'll get Scottish subsample figures, but the SNP are on 3.8% of the GB-wide vote, which perhaps puts them somewhere in the 40s in Scotland.

* Leaving aside unheard-of newcomers, Survation have firmly established themselves as the most Labour-friendly pollster in recent days.  They haven't followed YouGov back into the pack tonight - their final poll continues to show a miniscule Tory lead of only around 1%.  In the unlikely event that this is a fully accurate call, Jeremy Corbyn would probably become Prime Minister with the SNP's help.

Survation Scottish subsample : SNP 41%, Labour 29%, Conservatives 25%, Liberal Democrats 5%

* Oddly, The Herald (yes, our Herald) have commissioned a GB-wide poll from BMG and it shows a 13% Tory lead.  I don't think that really tells us anything other than that they must have used similar methodology to ICM and ComRes.

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The average Tory lead in tonight's polls is 8% if you don't include Qriously, and around 6.6% if you do.  The latter figure is on the fringes of potential hung parliament territory, but would be more likely to produce a modest overall majority.  However, there's no particular reason to attach magical significance to the average lead - it may well be that the most accurate pollster will be the one on either the Labour-friendly or Tory-friendly extreme edge of the spectrum.  (And of course most pundits will tell you it's going to be the latter.)

The average of the six Scottish subsamples that have appeared tonight is...

SNP 42.0%
Conservatives 26.8%
Labour 23.8%
Liberal Democrats 5.7%

Those numbers are eerily close to the findings of recent full-scale Scottish polls.  Due to the even split in the unionist vote, they'd probably produce a pretty decent result for the SNP in terms of seat numbers.