Four weeks to go
Here are this week's polls - slightly fewer than usual because of the Easter bank holiday, meaning we didn't get the usual Ashcroft poll on Monday.
Survation/Mirror (3/4) - CON 31%, LAB 33%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 18%, GRN 3% Opinium/Observer (3/4) - CON 33%, LAB 33%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 14%, GRN 7% YouGov/S Times (4/4) - CON 34%, LAB 33%, LDEM 10%, UKIP 13%, GRN 4% Populus (6/4) - CON 31%, LAB 33%, LDEM 10%, UKIP 15%, GRN 4% YouGov/Sun (7/4) - CON 33%, LAB 35%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 14%, GRN 5% TNS BMRB (7/4) - CON 30%, LAB 33%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 19%, GRN 4% ComRes/ITV/Mail (8/4) - CON 34%, LAB 33%, LDEM 12%, UKIP 12%, GRN 4% YouGov/Sun (8/4) - CON 34%, LAB 35%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13%, GRN 5% Populus (8/4) - CON 31%, LAB 33%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 16%, GRN 6% YouGov/Sun (9/4) - CON 35%, LAB 34%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 12%, GRN 4% Panelbase (9/4) - CON 31%, LAB 37%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 16%, GRN 4% Survation/Mirror (9/4) - CON 31%, LAB 35%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 15%, GRN 4%
Most of the polls continue to be close (with a couple of notable exceptions towards the end of the week), but we've seen significantly more Labour than Conservative leads in the last week, putting the UKPR polling average back to a one point Labour lead - CON 33%(-1), LAB 34%(nc), LDEM 9%(+1), UKIP 15%(+1), GRN 5%(nc). It's too early to be confident there has been any real change, but it's worth keeping an eye on it.
Scottish, constituency and other polling
If it hasn't been too busy a week for GB polls, there has been a wide selection of other polls. Last weekend there was a ComRes poll of Thanet South (the seat where Nigel Farage is standing) which showed the race as almost a dead heat between the Conservatives, UKIP and Labour. It provoked an attempt by UKIP to try and pooh-pooh ComRes's methodology, which I wrote about at length here.
There were two Scottish polls, both of them showing no sign of the SNP's lead fading away. Panelbase found an SNP lead of 16 points over Labour, up from 10 in their previous poll (though it's possible that was connected to question order). Tabs for that are here. Last night YouGov put out a new Scottish poll conducted after the first of the Scottish leader debates and straddling the second of them - it found the SNP's lead growing, up to 24 points over Labour. Tabs for that are here.
Lord Ashcroft released another batch of his own constituency polling mid-week, this time returning to some Con -v- Lab marginal seats where he had previously found tight races. These don't tell us much about the national race (they were a selection of seats that were showing a smaller than average swing to begin with) but give us some details on the individual races. More details here.
Finally, I saw an unusual county level poll of Kent today - conducted by Facts International (the company who do the fieldwork for ComRes's phone polls for the Mail). They found voting intentions in Kent of CON 39%, LAB 22%, LDEM 6%, UKIP 24%. That would be a 5% swing from Con to Lab, which on a uniform swing wouldn't be enough for any seats to change hands (Labour's closest target seat in Kent is Dover, which needs a 5.2% swing). Of course, the seats in Kent that are actually most interesting are not Labour targets, but UKIP ones - holding Rochester & Strood and trying to win Thanet South, and a uniform swing across Kent isn't much good in predicting the distribution of UKIP's vote.
Week Fourteen
This week doesn't seem to have been a good one for the Conservatives. The start of the week was was largely dominated by Labour's policy on non-doms, the end over arguments about Trident which became overshadowed by rows about the language Michael Fallon used to criticise Ed Miliband. How you tax rich people and whether or not the Conservatives are too nasty, to put it mildly, strong issues for the Tories. I expect we'll get polling on all of these issues at the weekend.
Yesterday was also the close of nominations for the general election. I'll be trying to get the Election Guide part of the site updated as soon as possible to reflect the full official candidate lists (so excuse me if I go a bit quiet!)
Projections
The latest forecasts from Election Forecast, May 2015, Elections Etc, the Guardian and YouGov are below. As ever, all show a hung Parliament - currently two are predicting the Tories to have more seats, two Labour to have more seats, and the Guardian's model a dead heat.
Elections Etc - Hung Parliament, CON 289(-11), LAB 266(+8), LD 22(+2), SNP 49(+2), UKIP 5(nc) Election Forecast - Hung Parliament, CON 282(-2), LAB 275(-1), LD 28(+2), SNP 41(+1), UKIP 1(nc) May 2015 - Hung Parliament, CON 265(-13), LAB 279(+12), LD 26(+1), SNP 54(nc), UKIP 3(nc) Guardian - Hung Parliament, CON 271(-5), LAB 271(+1), LD 29(+1), SNP 53(+3), UKIP 4(nc) YouGov Nowcast - Hung Parliament, CON 264(+2), LAB 277(+1), LD 28(nc), SNP 55(-1), UKIP 4(-3)
