If Mike Smithson over at Political Betting is right (and he usually is), then there was a spot of Team Livingstone skulduggery behind yesterday’s tit-for-tat poll exchange.
That “new” MORI poll which gives the Mayor a 2 per cent lead over Boris Johnson? Well, it turns out that it’s not new at all. MORI actually conducted their research some three weeks ago. Crucially, that’s before Lee Jasper was suspended.
By contrast, the YouGov poll which gave Johnson a 5 percent lead was conducted last week; after Jasper’s suspension.
Smithson indicates that Livingstone purposely held back on the MORI results:
“My understanding is that Labour and Ken knew about the MORI poll almost as soon as it had been completed but it was deemed to be a deadly secret because of the closeness of the finding.”
If so, it’s a totemic sign of just how desperate the incumbent Mayor’s become.
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