More from the YouGov/Sun poll

The tables for the YouGov/Sun poll are now up on their website. The fieldwork was indeed the 5th and 6th of January, so the majority of respondents would likely have been unaware of the Hoon/Hewitt "attempted coup".

The questions on the leadership wasn't actually more or less likely to vote Labour if they changed leader, instead it asked people if they would be more likely to vote Labour if they changed leader, or if they kept Brown. The question still doesn't tell us that much though!

Amongst current Labour voters 41% said it would make no difference, they would vote Labour anyway. Another 41% said they would be more likely to vote Labour if they kept Brown though, of course, this does not mean that they would not vote Labour without him. 15% of Labour voters would be more likely to vote Labour if Brown was replaced, but of course, they are already voting Labour anyway.

The more interesting part is 16% of current Tory voters and 27% of current Lib Dem voters say they would be more likely to vote Labour if they got rid of Brown. It sounds like a lot, but of course it is only "more likely" and that a very long way from saying "definitely would". "More likely" could be "not in a month of Sundays" as opposed to "not in a month of a million Sundays".

As I wrote yesterday, I think direct questions about how people would react to a change of Labour leader are of fairly limited use. The actual balance is between two things polls can't really tell us - on one side how the public would react to a politician they don't know yet, against on the other the organisational and opportunity cost (plus risk of utter chaos!) that changing leader would require.

YouGov also asked a question on who would make people most likely to vote Labour if they replaced Gordon Brown as Labour leader. As usual the top two figures were David Miliband and Jack Straw, which I think is largely just a case of recognition. Alan Johnson was a very close third.