MORI/Standard - CON 31, LAB 35, LD 10, UKIP 12

Ipsos MORI have released their monthly political monitor for the Evening Standard. Topline voting intention figures are CON 31%(nc), LAB 35%(+1), LDEM 10%(nc), UKIP 12%(-1). As you can see, there is no significant change from last month.

However, I suspect that's not the way some people will interpret it. I've already seen some reactions to ICM's poll yesterday making great play of UKIP dropping by six points to 12%, a change that was probably mostly a reversion to the mean after a strange result last month. MORI's 12% for UKIP is going to be misinterpreted in some parts as confirming a drop in UKIP support, when in reality it does no such thing. UKIP's level of support seems broadly unchanged from a month ago.

If you are looking at the changes from poll to poll you need to compare like-to-like. For methodlogical reasons different companies tend to show some consistent patterns in their results. Most notably in the current environment, the newer online companies like Survation, Opinium and TNS-BMRB tend to show much higher levels of support for UKIP than do traditional telephone companies like ICM and MORI (YouGov tend to give UKIP scores somewhere between the extremes). That means it is entirely misleading to look at Survation and Opinium polls from a week or two back with UKIP at 20% plus, compare them to ICM and MORI polls now with UKIP at 12%, and conclude that UKIP support has fallen. It hasn't necessarily fallen at all, it's just different pollsters using different methods that produce different results.

UPDATE: Full tabs already up on the Ipsos MORI website here

UPDATE2: Other interesting findings in the poll are that Ed Balls has a slight lead over George Osborne on who people think would be the most capable Chancellor, Balls 38%, Osborne 35%. In terms of party leaders though Cameron continues to have a substantial lead over Miliband on economic trust, 37% Cameron, 25% Miliband. Economic optimism also continues on a positive trend, the proportion of people expecting the economy to get better in the next year (31%) is now the same as the proportion that expect it to get worse.

UPDATE3: The Balls v Osborne result isn't actually that unusual - MORI have shown much the same before, here's a graph of past times they've asked the question. In fact, they've only shown Balls ahead twice before, and only shown Osborne ahead once.