Two interesting polls today. Times/Populus suggests that the SNP is well ahead in Scotland, but that support for independence has plummeted.

I don’t doubt either trend, but combined they do suggest that the Scots still aren’t actively engaging with the election to the extent that this accurately predicts how they are likely to vote. I suspect that increasing anxiety and confusion about independence can only drag the SNP share down. The incredibly low ‘other’ score also suggests that the small parties will get a boost once the RPA forces the media to start reminding people they actually exist. I suspect this too will drag down the SNP vote as people start to realise they can vote against Labour AND not support the SNP.

The Independent/CommunicateResearch poll meanwhile shows a significant dip in Tory support following the budget. Once again, you can’t take this as any great prediction. What it does suggest however is that the vote is incredibly soft, and volatile, at the moment. These massive boosts the Tories have been enjoying in recent polls say a lot more about the power vacuum at the top of the Labour party than anything that Cameron is doing.

Both polls are bad news for the Tories. The former suggests they are likely to end up in fourth place in Holyrood, while the latter suggests that once Labour sorts itself out, and the Tory policy reports start being published, the Tory vote can only fall. Not only can Labour not afford a snap General Election, but the longer they can put it off, the longer the wheels will start to come off the Tory bandwagon.

Potential good new for the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland.

According to Ipsos-Mori, they are up to 9% in the polls. Even with a large margin of error, that is good news for a party which languished on 3.7% last time, although they managed to hold onto their 6 seats.

Also interesting is the sudden appearance of the Greens, at 3%. While this could conceivably mean they get seats in their own right, it also suggests a rise in the overall non-sectarian vote which in theory should transfer.

More opinionpollballs in the Guardian today. Apparently, the Great British Public wants MPs to do a statutory 7 hours a week for chariddy.

If I ever acquire a John Hemming-style fortune, I’m going to entertain myself by commissioning banal opinion polls. For example, one thing I’m dying to know is whether the British public prefers kittens that are ‘hideous’, ‘ok-looking’, ‘quite cute’ or ‘very cute’.

In all seriousness, this poll is indicative of exactly the sort of mindless anti-politics that is all too pervasive in modern Britain. If every MP in the country did do 7 hours voluntary service each week, the first thing people would complain about is why they are no longer working 50-60 hours a week representing their constituents. It’s based on a complete ignorance of what MPs do and is designed to take a potshot rather than actually inform debate.

Most MPs I know in fact take it for granted that they should work on a variety of charitable and community-based projects. But charity fun-runs are no substitute for scrutinising legislation and holding government to account.

Frankly, I think we’ve already gone too far in terms of turning MPs into mobile Citizens Advice Bureaus and case-worker-extraordinaires. Apart from anything else, I suspect it is one of the main reasons why MPs have been so poor at blocking centralisation. If you devolve too much power, then the ability of MPs to manfully jump in and solve all their constituents’ problems would be severely limited. Instead, people would pay more attention further down the foodchain, something which would help both local politics and service delivery.

Throughout the debate on party funding in recent months, one of the most oft-cited arguments is that political parties already get public funding via their expenses allowances. Personally, I’m coming around to the conclusion that this is one of the more pernicious forms of state support, responsible for both distracting MPs away from their real job and undermining other politicians further down the foodchain. Other forms of party funding, in my view, would be far less pernicious (although I notice a lot of opponents of increased party funding are all for the status quo).

I’ve just done another one of those interminable YouGov consumer surveys.

The thing about YouGov is they don’t appear to have any quality control over their surveys. The reason why I take part in political surveys is that I’m interested in the result; I have no such stake in a survey about London restaurants or utility bills. Yet all too often, the surveys asked for the latter are insanely complicated and endlessly repetitive, to the point that about halfway in, you start to lose the will to live. More precisely, I have to admit, I simply start making random replies in order to get through as quickly as possible in order to get my 50p. The same applies to those BrandIndex surveys, only more so.

I can’t possibly be the only one. If I were YouGov, or one of the companies that commissions such surveys, I’d be really worried about this: are they really getting reliable data? A bit of quality control I suspect would work wonders. How about it guys?

There is a question which this article does not (dares not?) ask: how retarded must the 2 out of 5 Americans who don’t know who Homer Simpson’s son be?

If people are that ignorant about popular culture, what hope is there for politics?

Mike Smithson rightly dismisses today’s Mori poll as an accurate reflection of voter intention.  Indeed, I have always dismissed Mori polls for the same reasons.

But there is one small note of optimisim.  Because Mori only looks at those “certain to vote” it does suggest a slight hardening of the Lib Dem vote, which is notoriously soft (the main reason why Mori normally underestimates our voter share).  That is good news because a hardening base provides us with a bridgehead from which to target more voters.

Whether this proves to be a trend rather than a blip, and whether the party can muster the sort of activity to maximise this (recruitment, developing our supporter networks) both remain to be seen.  And as the bulk of this polling was conducted before the poor headlines we have suffered over the past few days, no-one should be holding their breath, at least not yet.