Ipsos MORI also shows a swing to the Tories

A new Ipsos MORI poll in Friday's Sun apparently has identical figures to the last YouGov poll, showing a big swing towards the Conservatives since their conference and putting them slightly ahead of Labour. The topline figures with changes from the previous Ipsos MORI poll, taken shortly after Gordon Brown's conference speech, are CON 41%(+7), LAB 38%(-3), LDEM 11%(-5).

There is no confirmation of the dates for this poll, but presumably it is the first poll carried out entirely after Gordon Brown's announcement that he would not be calling an election.

While the lead has varied from poll to poll, with Populus showing Labour ahead and MORI and YouGov showing the Conservatives ahead, all the recent polls have shown a pretty consistent picture - the two main parties close to one another in the high thirties and low forties and the Lib Dems mercilessly squeezed down to 11 or 12 percent.

UPDATE: The full details of the poll are here. It was conducted entirely on Wednesday afternoon after 2 o'clock, with all the caveats that implies (snap phone polls don't give much time to phone back people who aren't in, increasing the risk of non-contact bias. It doesn't mean the poll isn't valid, just that the sample won't be as high a quality as one done over several days). It does mean that this poll was conducted entirely after both the decision that there was not to be an election and the announcement of the new inheritance tax arrangements.

Overall a narrow plurality of people supported Gordon Brown's decision not to call an election, by 47% to 42%. Looking at changes to perceptions of Gordon Brown, in MORI's polls last month he had a towering lead over David Cameron as the man more likely to be a capable Prime Minister, 58% to 17%. While Brown retains a large lead, the figures have narrowed sharply, down to 45% for Brown and 29% for Cameron. Brown's trust ratings have also fallen - in August 54% thought he was trustworthy, 37% disagreed - a net score of +17. Now 48% think he is, 43% disagree, a net score of +5. There has been an even more noticable change in the other direction in David Cameron's trustworthyness ratings - his net rating was -14 in August, now it is +4, pretty much the same as Brown.