Friday round-up

A quick round of today's polls. There were two voting intention polls out today, both of which I expect were slight outliers from the norm... but in opposite directions.

Both Populus and YouGov have been showing average Labour leads of around 3-4 points this month. YouGov's poll this morning had topline figures of CON 32%, LAB 39%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13% - a seven point Labour lead (tabs here). Populus's poll had topline figures of CON 35%, LAB 35%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 14% - both parties equal (tabs here.) In both cases, I suspect we're just seeing normal sample variation.

The other "new" poll out today was the latest TNS Scottish referendum poll. As usual the face-to-face methodology means the poll is actually pretty old - it was conducted between the 25th June and 9th July, so the start of the fieldwork was three weeks ago. Topline referendum voting intention is YES 32%(nc), NO 41%(-5). Without don't knows, that translates to YES 44%, NO 56%... TNS has typically been showing yes support at 40-42% once you exclude don't knows, so this is a good YES poll by TNS standards.