ComRes show 14 point Tory lead
I was expecting a Populus poll tonight, but normally they drop me an email to say when the figures will be published on their website and - so far - no email, so it's looking doubtful.
What has turned up is the monthly poll for ComRes, which has the Conservatives on 44% and Labour on 30%. The Conservatives are up 1 point on ComRes's last poll, putting them at the highest score they've recieved so far in ComRes's relatively short history, but Labour are up 4 points, so the Tory lead drops slightly. No idea what the Lib Dem figure is yet.
It is obviously a far small Conservative lead than that shown in YouGov's recent polls. While YouGov have produced three polls since the local elections showing the Conservatives with a lead of 20 points or above, so far it hasn't been reflected by any other pollsters. In the case of Populus and MORI, that's because they haven't produced any polls at all since then - we're due polls from both of them. For various methodological reasons I wouldn't expect any pollsters to produce Tory leads as large as YouGov, but it will be interesting to see how close they get.
UPDATE - the full figures are CON 44%(+1), LAB 30%(+4), LDEM 16%(-3). The poll was conducted between May 30th and June 1st. That sharp drop in Lib Dem support is against the trend of all the other recent polls, which rather unnoticed by commentators - who have understandably been concentrating on the whopping great Tory leads in the polls - have been slowly but surely increasing their support in polls over the last few months. There's no obvious reason why the Lib Dems should suddenly lose support, so colour me a bit dubious on that finding until we see it supported elsewhere.
