Today’s parliamentary election in Britain will be something of a test for the nation’s embattled opinion polling companies. In part this is due to past perceived ‘failures’ at the 2015 General Election and the 2016 referendum on Brexit. But it is also due to the extraordinary swings in voting intention reported during the six week campaign, and the very diverse modelling used by pollsters to adjust for differential turnout among demographic groups.

All this is reflected in the wide range of figures for the Conservative lead in last night’s final surveys: from 1 percentage point with Survation to 13 points with BMG. On top of that, the nature of Britain’s single member constituency, ‘first-past-the-post’ electoral system makes it hard to calculate the distribution of national polling scores around 650 individual races. (Regional sub-samples are often too small to be credible). Whatever the election outcome, certain polling firms will look very foolish on Friday, while others may take credit for wise modelling.

As for the parties, the ruling Conservatives will be relieved that no poll shows them below 40 per cent, usually enough to guarantee a significant parliamentary majority under the British system. Labour’s fate depends on whether the outcome is nearer to Survation’s polling, which gives them 40 per cent support, or ICM’s much-weighted model which gives them 34 per cent. In the 2015 election the opposition achieved 30.4 per cent compared to the Conservatives’ 36.9 per cent.

That advantage of 6.5 per cent in 2015 compares to an average Conservative lead of 7.4 points in the nine final polls of this campaign presented below.

While the polls show very different gaps between the Conservative and Labour parties, there is more consensus on the minor forces. The Liberal Democrats are concentrated largely in the 7-9 per cent range after a campaign that failed to take off, with the UK Independence Party in a poor position around 4-5 per cent compared to a 2015 result of 12.6 per cent. The Green Party has also failed to advance its score.

 

Average of final polls
(voting intentions, per cent)

Conservative (Con) 43.4 range 41 to 46
Labour (Lab) 36.0 range 33 to 40
Liberal Democrats (LD) 7.8 range 6 to 10
UK Independent Party (UKIP) 4.4 range 2 to 5
Scottish National Party (SNP) 4.1 range 3 to 5
Greens (Gr) 2.0 range 1 to 5
Others (Oth) 1.9 range 1 to 5

Pollsters: BMG, ComRes, ICM, Kantar TNS, Opinium, Panelbase, Survation, Surveymonkey, YouGov.

 

Final polling summary
(Media partner, sample size, fieldwork dates in brackets)

BMG (The Herald)
Con 46, Lab 33, LD 8, UKIP 5, SNP 4, Gr 3, Oth 2 (1199, 06.06-07.06)

ComRes (The Independent)
Con 44, Lab 34, LD 9, UKIP 5, SNP 4, Gr 2, Oth 1 (2051, 05.06-07.06)

ICM (The Guardian)
Con 46, Lab 34, LD 7, UKIP 5, SNP 5, Gr 2, Oth 1 (1532, 06.06-07.06)

Kantar TNS
Con 43, Lab 38, LD 7, UKIP 4, SNP 4, Gr 2, Oth 2 (2159, 01.06-07.06)

Opinium
Con 43, Lab 36, LD 8, UKIP 5, SNP 5, Gr 2, Oth 1 (3002, 04.06-07.06)

Panelbase
Con 44, Lab 36, LD 7, UKIP 5, SNP 4, Gr 2, Oth 2 (3018, 02.06-07.06)

Survation
Con 41, Lab 40, LD 8, UKIP 2, SNP 3, Gr 2, Oth 2 (2798, 06.06-07.06)

Surveymonkey (The Sun)
Con 42, Lab 38, LD 6, UKIP 4, SNP 3, Gr 1, Oth 5 (11853, 04.06-06.06)

YouGov (The Times)
Con 42, Lab 35, LD 10, UKIP 5, SNP 5, Gr 2, Oth 1 (2130, 05.06-07.06)

All polls published 07.06.2017 apart from Opinium on 06.06.2017. All polls carried out online apart from Survation (telephone) and BMG (mixed telephone and online).