Headline figures from a sample of 241:
Tories....20
Labour....28
Lib Dems..16
SNP.......30
Others.....6
YouGov tend to have relatively large sample sizes, but the Scottish sample is still low numbers and won't be weighted to the Scottish population. So is there any value at all in looking at these figures? Well, to begin with, we can look at how these figures compare with previous samples. The graph below shows the last Scottish sub-samples from the last seven YouGov polls.
So you can see the variability that appears in these small samples. This does seem to show the SNP moving ahead of Labour.
These samples can also be combined to produce a larger sample size. Albeit this will retain the poor weighting. Anyway, the most recent seven polls combine to give a sample of 1408 over the period of 13 March 09 to 16 May 09. This gives the following results:
Tories....21
Labour....33
Lib Dems..13
SNP.......28
Others.....5
So Labour still ahead here - probably as expected. Taking the combination of these sub samples means we're looking at a much longer period, so more recent factors (expenses) will be less visible. In future I'll also show a rolling average keeping the sample size at >1000. This should show results with a respectable sample size, but show a trend over time, evening out the sharp changes of the individual sub-samples. It will lag behind the real situation though.
Anyway, this post is really about getting the blog up and running and it should give an indication of the type of data I'll be trying to post and hopefully it will be of interest to some. Obviously there are huge issues involved with sample sizes and methodology and I, or someone else, will try to tackle them here as well. I'll also try a bit more of the interpretation of the results as well.
Good luck!
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