MORI give the Conservatives a ten point lead
An Ipsos-MORI poll in Monday's Sun shows the Conservatives ten points ahead of Labour. The topline figures with changes from MORI's poll in the FT at the beginning of the month are CON 41%(+5), LAB 31%(-1), LDEM 18%(-3).
The last poll I can find to put the Conservatives as high as 41% was almost 14 years ago. A MORI poll for the Sunday Times in September 1992 had the Tories on 41%, a fortnight later the UK was forced out of the ERM and the Conservatives' reputation for economic competence - and hence their political support - never recovered. The last poll to give a double-digit Conservative lead was in June 1992.
MORI's poll ratings tend to be more volatile than the other polling companies, probably due to their lack of political weighting and their unforgiving filter by likelihood to vote, but the trends displayed in the poll are in line with those produced by all the other companies - over the past month polls have consistently shown the Conservatives making significant gains in support since the local elections, the Liberal Democrats falling back slightly and Labour stuck in the low thirties.
It's worth mentioning that this is also the first poll for many years that, were it to be repeated at a general election, on a uniform swing would leave the Conservatives with an overall majority in the House of Commons - albeit a wafer thin one of only 6* seats. Of course, a uniform swing is but a convenient fiction and there are likely to be several years and a new Prime Minister before the next general election. No one should return to their constituencies and prepare for goverment just yet!
(*Why only six you ask, when elsewhere people are quoting figures in the 40s? The most widely used swing calculator on the internet is at Martin Baxter's excellent Electoral Calculus site. Martin's figures aren't based on a uniform swing though, but a modified proportional one - so if the Lib Dems are five points down on their general election score of 23%, rather that deduct 5 percentages points from their support in each seat as you would with a uniform swing, their vote in each seat is reduced by 5/23=21% of what they got at the last election. This stops the mathematical impossibilities that a uniform swing sometimes throws up, like parties getting a minus vote in poor seats, but can lead to some ludicrously big swings against the Liberal Democrats. Both methods are an approximation and on past performance they are as accurate as each other, but I prefer the uniform swing. At some point in the future I will put up a spreadsheet to let people make their own uniform swing calculations based on my notional figures).
