ICM/Sun Telegraph - CON 38%, LAB 36%, LD 14% YouGov/Sun Times - CON 35%, LAB 43%, LD 9%
It is over a year since we had an ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph, but there is one tomorrow and it shows something almost (but not quite) as rare: a Conservative lead. Topline figures with changes from the last ICM poll in the Guardian just under a fortnight ago are CON 38%(+2), LAB 36%(-2), LDEM 14%(nc), Others 12%.
UPDATE: This will, no doubt, cause great and largely unwarrented excitement. Whenever a poll shows an unusual result I offer the same caveat - sure, it could be the start of some new trend, but more often than not it turns out to be a blip caused by normal sample error.
Pollsters' different methodologies have impacts upon their topline figures, and ICM tends to show some of the most positive figures for the Conservatives. Of the five polls in 2011 that have shown Conservative leads, four of them have been from ICM. At least part of the reason for this is that ICM (and to a lesser extent Populus) estimate how people who say "don't know" would actually vote, reallocating 50% of them to the party they voted for in 2010. This tends to help the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives and harm Labour, in recent months quite dramatically (though of course, we won't know how much difference it made in this poll till the tabs appear)
Looking across the wider polling landscape YouGov's daily polling is showing an average lead of 4 or 5 points for Labour, the last two polls from Populus (whose methodology is extremely similar to ICM's) have shown a Labour lead of 8 points, MORI's last few polls have shown Labour leads between 2-7 points, ComRes's recent polls have shown Labour leads between 2-4 points, ICM's last poll also had a 2 point Labour lead.
In short, this is a single poll, and the bigger picture continues to be of a small Labour lead. We may see other polls from other companies show a similar pattern to ICM in coming days - time will tell - but until then don't despair/get too excited* (*delete as applicable)
UPDATE2: In contrast, YouGov's weekly poll for the Sunday Times has topline figures of CON 35%, LAB 43%, LDEM 9%, Others 13%. An eight point lead for Labour is high by YouGov's standards, but no more inconsistent with their average Labour lead of five points or so than the 2 and 3 point leads they showed during the week.
UPDATE3: There was also a BPIX poll in the Mail on Sunday. They had topline figures of CON 36%, LAB 41%, LDEM 11%, Others 12%
