After another poll this weekend from the Observer people seem to have picked out that Campbell and Huhne are running each other quite close.

This has been confirmed by several other polls which have been in the field over recent weeks.

However, I'm not convinced that they give an accurate picture.

It is true that the Hughes campaign was severely hampered by his handling of interest in his private life. The Lib Dems were happy to elect him as President - and not just because his opponent then was Lembit Opik. The leader is a different role though.

I think its widely accepted that Huhne has done well amongst the activists. He is much better known to activists through his work in the European parliament and he benefits from not being the establishment choice. However, this election is of the whole party. Even if there is a reletively low overall turnout of 60% (and I suspect it will be higher because of the much bigger media coverage) the number of armchair members voting makes the activist base far less significant.

The Observer polled constituency Chairs, others have polled councillors. Hardly what could be described as arm-chair members.

The only company that has records of Lib Dem members to poll is YouGov. It managed to poll about 300 of them in order to come out with its findings. However, even its sample I expect is skewed in favour of activists. Many of whom will be campaigners who joined YouGov explicitly to help slant the findings of YouGov's other polls.

YouGov might have a way of balancing out these biases from all parties when doing general voting intention amongst the electorate. For a start, there are people from all parties trying to do this. However, the sample of Lib Dem voters is very small and there is no counter-weight to the activist base.

I suspect the first round of voting will be for Campbell with a greater advantage than is predicted by the polls. What then happens in round 2 is anybodies guess - but I still think we're on for a Ming win next week.

Y