Latest YouGov poll is back to normality - CON 40%, LAB 41%, LDEM 8%

YouGov's regular voting intention poll this week has topline figures of CON 40%(-3), LAB 41%(+2), LDEM 8%(nc). Fieldwork was on Monday and Tuesday and changes are since last week. Full tabs are here. The movement towards Labour here is likely to be just a reversion to the mean after an unusual outlier last week. As ever, one shouldn't put too much weight on unusual movement in voting intention polls when there is no obvious reason to expect a change, more often than not they'll turn out to just to random sample variation.

And, for the benefit of the weird 500 post mumsnet thread about why Labour are losing women, based on a crossbreak in last week's poll than showed Labour dropping six points among women, Labour are back up by five points among women this week. Demographic crossbreaks in polls have smaller samples, hence are more volatile and can bounce about a lot from poll to poll, often producing strange things. In something as subtle as voting intention where a difference of a few points can change the picture completely the crossbreaks in individual polls are best just ignored. If you really want to look at the demographic breakdown of voting intention, look for trends across a large number of polls over a period of time and look for consistent change - don't jump on a figure in a single poll that fits a convenient narrative.