"Gold Standard" in Survey Research

"For some time commentators have been saying that the Conservatives could not win the next general election because they were stuck on 40 per cent in the polls and needed to get to 45 per cent to have the prospect of an overall majority. There was something in this argument. It would require an extraordinary collapse of the Labour Party for the Conservatives to win outright. Yet now the unthinkable has happened.

A YouGov poll yesterday in The Sunday Times put Conservative support at 45 per cent, with Labour on 32 and the Liberal Democrats on 14. These are landslide figures. Since the 2005 general election I have taken YouGov as my gold standard poll ..."

William Rees-Mogg’s
The Times, Dec 2007