Coy Cleggites?

In a must read post, Anthony Wells notes that there is a new variant of the Shy Tory and Bashful Blairite: the Coy Cleggite. Traditionally, ICM and Populus have allocated up to 50 percent of undecided respondents to the party they voted for at the last election. Wells writes:

‘Polls are now showing a large proportion of people who voted Lib Dem in 2010 saying they don’t know how they would vote in an election tomorrow, and ICM’s reallocation of don’t knows is now favouring them. In ICM’s last three polls the re-allocation of don’t knows has bumped up the level of Liberal Democrat support by 2 points – yesterday’s topline figures of CON 36%, LAB 38%, LDEM 14% were CON 37%, LAB 40%, LDEM 12% without the don’t knows. Naturally this leads us to the question of whether this is a sound thing to do. Certainly there is solid evidence to back up what ICM and Populus do.