ICM show Lib Dems up and AV and FPTP neck and neck

ICM's monthly poll for the Guardian is out. Topline voting intention figures with changes from ICM's last poll in January are CON 35%(nc), LAB 38%(-1), LDEM 18%(+3). The three point Labour lead is very close to Populus's (who use a similar method to ICM's), and to YouGov's four point lead at the weekend (though I still expect that one was a bit of an outlier). The reallocation of don't knows in Populus and ICM's polls should be expected to produce slightly lower Labour leads than other pollsters.

More surprising is that 18% for the Liberal Democrats, their highest score since October. We've seen quite a lot of variation in the levels of support different companies give the Liberal Democrats this Parliament, but recently it had looked as though they were starting to come together. Looking at all the companies's most recent polls YouGov have them at 10%, ComRes, Populus and Angus Reid at 11% and MORI at 13% - there's no obvious explanation for the large contrast with ICM's figure.

ICM also have some interesting findings on the AV referendum. They have voting intention in the referendum standing at YES 37%(-7), NO 37%(-1), Don't know 27%(+9). Changes are from the last time ICM asked the question in December - this is the first time that a poll that was not prompted with explanations of the system or pro- and anti- arguments has shown the NO campaign catching the YES campaign. Note that the fieldwork was conducted between Friday and Sunday, the first since Cameron's and Clegg's repective pro and anti speeches and the first since the media have starting to devote some attention to the campaign.

UPDATE: YouGov's daily poll for the Sun has topline figures of CON 36%, LAB 42%, LDEM 11%. After 7 polls in a row with the Labour lead at 7 points or above, including two ten point leads, we've now just seen three YouGov polls in a row showing the Labour lead of below 7 points.