Latest Ashcroft, TNS and YouGov polling
Lord Ashcroft put out a new batch of constituency polls today, this time revisiting some Conservative -vs- Labour marginals that were very close the last time he polled them. The average swing across the seats polled is 4.4 from Con to Lab, the equivalent of a two point lead in a GB poll. This is obviously bigger that the position in most national polls, but I suspect it's more of an England effect than a marginal effect - all the seats polled by Ashcroft were in England, and because of the collapse of Labour in Scotland the Con>Lab swing in England is actually bigger than in GB as a whole. Full details of the polls are here.
Most of the seats Ashcroft polled showed results that were pretty similar to the last time he polled them at the tail end of last year, with changes well within the margin of error. The only big shifts were Labour doing much better in Chester than before, the Conservatives doing much better in Worcester than before, and Labour doing much better in Southampton Itchen. I expect the last one is just a reversion to the mean after the previous Southampton Itchen poll produced figures that stuck out like a sore thumb - this poll showed a fairly typical swing in the seat, when Ashcroft's previous Southampton Itchen poll had shown a very dubious looking swing from Lab to Con.
TNS also released a new poll today with CON 33%, LAB 32%, LD 7%, UKIP 17%, GREEN 4%, OTHER 7%. TNS typically show a significantly larger Labour lead than other pollsters, so the small Tory lead is slightly surprising. It may be a methodology effect - TNS seem to have dropped the weighting by European vote that they introduced earlier this year (though its introduction didn't seem to make much difference, so its dropping really shouldn't), and have started reallocating UKIP and Green supporters in constituencies that don't have UKIP or Green
Finally, tonight's YouGov poll for the Sun has topline figures of CON 34%, LAB 36%, LD 7%, UKIP 12%, GRN 6% - so a couple of Labour leads from YouGov so far this week. For the record, today's poll has Labour at their highest this year, UKIP at their lowest this year... but of course, all the normal caveats apply, don't get overexcited about individual unusual polls, watch the trend across all the pollsters.
