Latest YouGov / The Sun results 26th August - Con 33%, Lab 37%, LD 8%, UKIP 13%; APP -21
Every Summer at YouGov we review our polling methodology to make sure we are keeping up with Britain's changing population and are still producing the most accurate results possible. As a member of the British Polling Council, we are also committed to being as open as possible about our methods and any changes we make.
Our polls in the European election this year performed well compared to the actual result giving us confidence that we are on the right track, and as such this year's review does not make any significant departures from our previous methods. We are still weighting and sampling by the same variables as before, still asking the same questions and still treating the data in the same way.
The only change we are making is our regular update to our weighting targets to reflect trends in the population. YouGov weight our samples according to party identification and wherever possible we will continue to use respondent's data from the time of the May 2010 general election when we could relate party identification to people's election votes. However, many of our respondents joined the panel at a later date, and hence we need to factor in how party identification has developed since then. Comparing individual respondents answers now to the answers they gave in 2010 the proportion of people who identify as Liberal Democrats continues to decline and increasing numbers of people have started to identify with UKIP. We have adjusted our target weights to reflect this and to reflect ongoing trends in newspaper readership.
The changes make only minor differences to our voting intention figures. On average the new weights show UKIP 1 point higher, with the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats all down by a fraction of a percentage point.
Today's voting intention figures of CON 33%, LAB 37%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13% would have been CON 34%, LAB 37%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 12% under the old weights.
Image courtesy of Getty Images
