ComRes/Indy on Sunday - CON 37, LAB 37, LD 11

There is a new ComRes poll in tomorrow's Indy on Sunday & Sunday Mirror. Topline results are CON 37% (-1), LAB 37% (-2), LDEM 11%(nc), Others 15%(+3) - changes are from the last online ComRes poll in mid-May.

ComRes's online polls tend to be the most pro-Consevative of all the polling companies, but this is actually the same Lab and Con figures as their telephone poll at the end of May. Note the difference between this and the daily YouGov polls which seem to be showing a pretty steady Labour lead of 5 points or so. With the Populus poll last week the difference was down to Populus weighting by turnout and YouGov not doing so - we'll have to look at the tables for this one to see if it's the same.

ComRes also have some interesting follow up questions (though as ever, they are all asked as agree/disagree!). On leader ratings there is a sharp drop for Ed Miliband since last month. In May 22% agreed he was turning out to be a good leader, 39% disagreed (a net rating of minus 17), now only 18% agree he is a good leader, with 45% disagreeing. As with the weekly YouGov/Sunday Times ratings, public opinion seems to be firming against Miliband. 17% of Labour voters agreed with the statement that the Labour party were unelectable with Miliband as leader.

ComRes also asked if people thought David Miliband, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper would make better leaders. As in the YouGov/Sunday Times poll last week, very few people thought Ed Balls or Yvette Cooper would be any better, but did tend to think David Miliband would make a better leader.

ComRes also asked if people thought the NHS would be safer under Labour than the coalition - surprisingly given that Labour normally lead on the NHS, only 34% agreed with 37% disagreeing.

UPDATE: one thing to note about the ComRes NHS question – I’ve seen some people tweeting that it shows that people trust the government more than Labour on the NHS. It does not show this.

The question found 34% of people who agreed that Labour would be better than the coalition on the NHS, and 37% of people who disagreed. It does not follow that those 37% necessary think the coalition would be better, they just don't think Labour would be better. Some of those people will be those who disagree with the statement because they think the coalition and Labour are equally bad (or equally good).

The actual picture could, just for the sake of argument, be 34% who think Labour would do better, 10% who think the coalition is better, and 27% who think they’d be the same as each other. With the question here it is impossible to tell. (Hence why it’s often better to ask slightly more complex questions than agree/disagree!)

UPDATE 2: The full tabs are here. They are very odd - the final VI figures there have others on 39% and total to 124%, which is obviously wrong. I expect it'll turn out to just be a problem with producing the tables, but thought I should flag it up!

UPDATE 3: It is indeed just a problem with coding the tables. VI figures are correct.