ICM show sharp drop in Tory lead
ICM's monthly poll for the Guardian has voting intention figures, with changes from their last poll, of CON 39%(-4), LAB 34%(+2), LDEM 19%(+1). It was conducted between the 18th and 20th of April.
It is obviously a sharp reduction in the Tory lead when the polls had appeared to be stabilising with the Conservatives in a double-point lead over Labour. This seems to be counter-intuitive when the Labout government have been having a rather torrid time of it over the abolition of the 10p tax rate, but that doesn't necessarily mean it wrong.
The poll would also have been influenced by media coverage of Gordon Brown's visit to the USA. Coverage of Brown looking statesmanlike with other world leaders could have boosted him (compare with the polls showing a sharp narrowing of the lead in January 2008 after the Davos conference when the media also had lots of coverage of Gordon Brown looking statesmanlike). Arguing against that, the poll certainly doesn't show any increase in Gordon Brown's own ratings: David Cameron now has a lead of 8 points over Brown as best Prime Minister (37% to 29%, with Clegg on 8%).
Rather the most likely reason seems to be an increase in economic confidence - 55% of people in this poll said they were confident about their own financial situation, compared to 48% in February when ICM last asked it. On Friday we should have to chance to see if the boost in economic confidence or the recovery in Labour support are echoed by YouGov's monthly poll.
UPDATE: In a comment on a post below Mark Senior asked whether having the fieldwork for this poll over a weekend may have made a difference. Well, actually the majority of ICM's polls for the Guardian are carried out over the weekend so this isn't unusual at all. Does it make a difference? Well, in theory it could if it produced samples that were different in a way that weighting didn't correct. As we've commented here in the past, for the last 6 months or so ICM's polls for the Guardian have had a tendency to show lower Tory leads than their ones for other clients, something that seems to be pure co-incidence given they are conducted in exactly the same way (confirmed by Nick Sparrow, ICM's boss). I initially thought it might have connected with ICM's Guardian polls normally being conducted over the weekend and their Sunday Telegraph polls being done midweek - but it also held true when Guardian polls were done mid-week. I suppose it's still possible there could be that there is a midweek vs. weekend fieldwork difference, with pure co-incidence explaining the midweek Guardian polls.
