Cornwall opinion poll suggests Labour surge as Lib Dems slump

Marketing Means is a polling company based at Ashburton, Devon, and their latest survey of voting intentions has made it on to the front page of today's Western Morning News. The pollsters have kindly sent me the data specific to Cornwall:

Conservatives - 36%
Labour - 27%
Liberal Democrats - 18%

This is quite a turn around from last year's general election result, but before Labour supporters get too excited let me point out that the headline is based on rather small numbers. For example, the total sample size in Cornwall was only 75. Of these, only 22 said they would now vote Labour (but only 12 said they would vote Liberal Democrat.) 27 supported the Conservatives, 5 would vote Green, 8 for UKIP and one "other."

Marketing Means claims to have pioneered a more localised approach to poll weighting and demographic adjustment to take into account the growing pluralism of British politics. Their website say this "led to them accurately predicting the South West region's results in 2005, and being the only pollster in 2010 election campaign series in the Independent on Sunday to consistently predict that the Conservative Party would fall short of an overall majority in the House of Commons."