Instant Polling Tracks Reponse to UK Leader Debate

Last night, researchers in the UK were busy conducting instant polls to track response to the nation's first televised leader debate, which drew 9.4 million viewers.

Within 4 minutes of the end of the programme, YouGov received top line results from its poll for the Sun newspaper. This put Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg ahead with 51% of viewers thinking he performed best in the debate. Tory party leader David Cameron drew a 29% vote, while Labour's Gordon Brown trailed behind with 19%.

Additionally YouGov asked viewers who they thought would make the best Prime Minister - having posed this question to the same people before the debate. Beforehand, 43% named Cameron, 31% named Brown and 14% named Clegg; 11% were don't knows. Immediately after the debate, Clegg's score had almost doubled to 26%; with Cameron's score down 4 to 39%, Brown's down 2 to 29% and don't knows down five to 6%.

Fifteen minutes after the first election debate, ITV's poll conducted by ComRes, also showed Clegg in the lead with a 43% vote, ahead of Cameron with 23% support and the Prime Minister with 20%.

ComRes partnered with Lightspeed Research to pre-recruit a panel of around 15,000 people who would be watching the first leaders' debate. As the credits rolled, telephones rang in a selection of homes across the UK, and the voice of ITV's James Mates invited participants to answer questions about the debate, achieving a sample of 4,000 in minutes.

Separately, ITN is using Conquest's recently launched viral measurement tool InfeXious to gauge London voters' gut reactions to last night's debate, and predict which leader has the highest 'contageous potential'.

The tool will track a politician's ability to create 'buzz and excitement' among the electorate as the campaign progresses, and results will be broadcast on London Tonight on Friday 16 May.

Last month, political polling group Tweetminster announced it would be analysing around two million Tweets, as part of an experiment to determine whether activity on Twitter correlates to electoral success in May's general election.

Its latest figures put the Conservatives ahead of Labour with 35% versus 32%, and the Lib Dems on 23%.

Web sites: www.yougov.co.uk, www.comres.co.uk , www.lightspeedresearch.com and www.conquestuk.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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