InTheLeadInPollsBeforePlpRevolt
Statement
Corbyn, Gateshead hustings, 11 Aug 2016: "[We] were indeed ahead in the polls until such a time as a number of people decided to have a leadership contest instead"
Hilary Benn was the first resignation, overnight on 25/26 Jun 2016.
So - were Labour ahead in the polls at that point, or at any point running up to it?
Reality
Saying "ahead in the polls" is not accurate.
Polls have a margin of error, so the normal way to work out where parties stand is to take a rolling average of the last few polls.
The number of polls averaged may vary: "Britain Elects" uses 7 and Wikipedia uses 10. Let's say we take any number from 3 upwards.
Out of more than 80 polls since Corbyn became leader on 12 Sep 2015, 3 have shown Labour ahead; the 3 were all conducted in March and April 2016 by YouGov.
However, the average of polls (assuming you are averaging at least 3 poll's worth of data) has shown Labour behind across this entire period.
It's also worth noting the gap was widening across May and June.
A more accurate statement could have been "We were briefly close enough to the Tories to have some polls giving us the edge, although we never actually caught up, and our average started sliding more than 2 months before the PLP revolt."
Data
BBC "Reality Check: Has Labour been ahead in the polls?" 12 Aug 2016
Between 12 September when Mr Corbyn became leader and the end of June there have been 75 voting intention polls carried out.
Of those, Labour has been ahead in three, all conducted in March and April by YouGov.
But looking at an average of the polls, the Conservatives have been ahead since the 2015 general election
