Leave snatches healthy lead, say polls (but remember how they called the election . . .)

THE referendum race has taken a dramatic turn that sees the Leave campaign out in front of its rival.

A fortnight ago, polls conducted over the internet on average had the two sides each with half of the vote (after the Don’t Knows were left to one side).

Meanwhile, almost all polls conducted by phone put Remain ahead, typically by around 55 per cent to 45 per cent.

But the form book was ripped up by 13 polls published last week that suggest Leave had snatched the lead.

Seven polls conducted via the internet put Leave on 53 per cent and Remain on 47 per cent. And while six phone polls painted a slightly better picture for Remain, they effectively made for a neck-and-neck race. Indeed last night a YouGov poll for ITV’s

put Leave on 44 per cent, two points ahead of Remain, with 9 per cent still undecided.

If the latest polls are right, David Cameron is staring at the possibility of a catastrophic defeat on Thursday.

Supporters of Remain might like to point to the failure of the polls to anticipate the Conservatives’ success in last year’s general election.

Meanwhile, the persistent gap – until now, at least – between the referendum figures produced by the two kinds of polling has done nothing to restore confidence that the polls will get it right this time.

In fact, getting this referendum result right is much more difficult for the pollsters than correctly forecasting a general election. How people propose to vote on Thursday cuts across party lines. There are Remain and Leave advocates in plenty among both Conservative and Labour supporters. Instead of being the usual tussle of Left and Right, this is a contest between “social liberals” and “social conservatives”.

In addition, there are some wellknown pitfalls to polling in any referendum. Often – though not always – there is a last-minute swing back to the status quo as polling day approaches, as voters draw back for fear of the risks that change would bring.

And even if the polls succeed in identifying any such movement, they often still end up underestimating the level of support for the status quo in the first place.