Latest ComRes & ICM, YouGov Wales and EU ref polls

Here's a round up of polls over recent days. For a quiet February week in a post-election year, there's quite a lot to rake over.

The monthly ICM poll for the Guardian has topline figures of CON 39%, LAB 32%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 11%, GRN 4%. Full tabs are here. The Conservative lead is up slightly from last month's ICM poll (Martin Boon's comments that "Labour drop three, which is perhaps a more realistic level of performance than the 35% we measured last month. Once again, this phone poll sample recalled voting in a Labour government in May 2015, the sixth time out of nine that our phone polls have done so since the election.")

At the weekend we had the monthly online ComRes poll for the Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror. Voting intention figures there were CON 41%, LAB 27%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 15%, GRN 3%. (full details are here. The twenty-seven percent for Labour equals the lowest they've recorded since the election (and indeed, since 2010) but ComRes have tended to produce the worst figures for Labour in recent polling, largely because they've made the most extensive changes since last year's polling error. ComRes have shifted to a turnout model based on socio-economic factors, while most of the other companies have produced comparatively minor interim changes while they wait for the polling inquiry to report. This may, of course, end up being the penultimate poll in the ComRes/Indy on Sunday series, though John Rentoul tweeted at the weekend that he hopes the ComRes polls will continue in the Sindy's bright new online future.

Thirdly there was a fresh YouGov Wales poll this morning, as usual Roger Scully offers a full write up over on his elections in Wales blog. In short, they show no real change in Westminster voting intentions, a boost for UKIP in Welsh assembly intentions (Constituency vote is CON 22%, LAB 34%, LDEM 5%, Plaid 19%, UKIP 18%, Regional vote is CON 22%, LAB 31%, LDEM 4%, Plaid 19%, UKIP 18%) and movement towards LEAVE in Welsh EU referendum voting intentions - REMAIN 37%, LEAVE 45%, DK/WNV 19%. It's worth noting that while Scottish opinion on the EU referendum is far more pro-EU than Britain as a whole, Welsh opinion seems to be similar to that in England.

Fourthly, there's a fresh ComRes/ITV telephone poll on the EU referendum. As has been discussed a lot lately (I wrote about it here) there is a significant contrast between telephone polls on the EU referendum and online polls on the EU referendum, with the former tending to show a much better position for the REMAIN campaign. Today's ComRes poll is the first telephone poll since the draft details of Cameron's renegotiation were released, and they show a significant tighting of the race compared to previous telephone polls - topline voting intentions are REMAIN 49%(-5), LEAVE 41%(+5). The eight point lead for Remain is still much more positive for them than online polls are suggesting, but the movement towards leave since the draft deal was announced is the same. Full details of the poll are here.

Finally, YouGov announced today that Peter Kellner is going to retire as YouGov President at the end of March. Peter was YouGov's Chairman for many years and was in charge of YouGov's political polling until Joe Twyman took over the team in 2010. He's continued to be our best known media face and an incredibly valuable source of wise counsel and good advice since then. I expect Joe or I will write more in due course, but he will be hugely missed.