NEWS16 April 2010
UK— No sooner had the UK’s first ever televised leaders’ debate gone off air last night when a host of research companies went into overdrive to deliver almost instantaneous feedback – with many news outlets billing the quick-reaction polls as historic events in their own right.
While the front pages of yesterday’s newspapers focused on what might be said at the debate in Manchester, this morning’s press focused on the results of the polls – published within minutes of the debate finishing – as the general election bandwagon gathers speed.
YouGov was first out of the blocks, claiming that the results of its online poll for The Sun were published with four minutes of the end of the debate. The firm boasted that its survey of more than 1,000 viewers was the “fastest representative survey ever conducted” in the UK.
Results found that 51% of respondents thought Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg “performed best overall” during the debate. Conservative chief David Cameron polled 29% and Labour’s Gordon Brown finished last with 19%.
ComRes followed minutes later, delivering the results of its poll for ITV News within a quarter hour of the debate finishing. In conjunction with Lightspeed Research, ComRes conducted automated telephone interviews with a pre-recruited sample of more than 4,000 people who had said they would watch the debate.
The firm has been running polls for ITV News all week and following the TV showdown, ComRes reported support for the Liberal Democrats up three percentage points to 24% compared to a survey conducted on Wednesday. Conservative support stayed the same at 35% while Labour dropped one point to 28%.
Clegg chalked up 43% of the vote for best performance of the evening ahead of Cameron on 26% and Brown on 20%.
The Sky News poll boasted a panel of 10,000 people and a sample of 1,600 who used text messaging to register their vote. Sky worked with feedback analytics firm Fizzback to carry out the survey, which rated the three leaders on ‘policy and personality’ as well as how well they performed in the debate. Respondents were able to rank Brown, Cameron and Clegg on a scale of -10 to +10.
As with the other polls, Clegg came out on top with 37% of the vote followed by Brown on 32% and Cameron on 31%.
Populus ran an online poll for The Times immediately after the debate, which saw a sample of just over 1,000 people interviewed. Again Clegg had it, but by a bigger margin, with 61% picking him as the debate winner.
Elsewhere there are less serious polls to enjoy, among them The Slapometer. Visitors to the site are given control of a giant hand which is used to slap one, or all, of the three leaders.
Graphs chart how many slaps the various leaders have accumulated over the course of the election campaign, with Cameron receiving most during the debate.
There are another two televised leaders debates scheduled over the next fortnight.