11/10/2013 00:00
TW
0

by RAY FLEMING
WELL, he talked the talk, over an hour of it. And he walked the walk, too: he must have covered a few miles as he roamed the stage of Blackpool's Winter Gardens. Apparently David Cameron got the idea for his talk-and-walk presentation from Ann Widdecombe's speech at the 1998 conference. But will his speech to the Conservative Party have shifted the opinion polls significantly? Channel 4 news promised a “snap” poll for last night but the first authentic result will probably be the ICM poll in today's Guardian, followed by Populus in the Times on Saturday and YouGov for the Telegraph and Sunday Times.

The pollsters have to be very careful indeed at a time like this, knowing that people want to see the results at the earliest possible moment but knowing also that taking a short cut to beat their rivals might be disastrous. It is important to remember when interpreting the results that even the best-run polls are subject to an error of up to two/three points either way. So narrow margins of advantage for either party can be misleading; there's a lot to be said, therefore, for taking an average of three or four polls. If Labour's lead has been reduced to, say, four points it would probably still win the election but not increase its majority.

Do the polls matter? Yesterday the UK bookies were quoting 2/7 on the election taking place and 5/2 against.