New Populus and Angus Reid polls
There are new polls out from Angus Reid and Populus that both show the Conservative lead narrowing - one noticably so. Angus Reid on Political Betting has topline figures, with changes from a week ago, of CON 38%(+1), LAB 28%(+2), LDEM 22%(nc). There is little significant change there, with both Labour and the Conservatives up at the expense of others, who are presumably down to around 12% - very low compared to some of the high scores Angus Reid have tended to give them, though not as low as YouGov yesterday or Populus today.
Populus's results will probably get more attention though - showing the Tory lead squeezed right down to 3 points. The topline figures with changes from a week ago are CON 36%(-3), LAB 33%(+1), LDEM 21%(nc). It is Populus's lowest figure for the Conservatives since June and their lowest Tory lead since 2008.
The fieldwork for Angus Reid was done on Sunday and Monday, so much of it would have been done before the Labour manifesto launch and coverage of it on the TV news last night. Populus's fieldwork is slightly more recent, being carried out on Monday and Tuesday, so will mostly have been after Labour's manifesto launch. The phone pollsters do seem to have speeded up their turnaround and shortened fieldwork periods considerably since the last election - I've seen a couple of phone poll done in a single day. I'm intrigued how they have gone about this, historically phone polls were spread over three days to allow the pollsters to repeatedly phone back people they couldn't contact to try and minimise non-contact bias. Clearly a poll done in just one or two days allows less time for call-backs, but there may be ways around this.
One particularly interesting result from Populus was a series of question presenting people with policies that have been announced by the main parties and asking them to identify which party's policy it is. They wrongly identified the NI cut with Labour, rather than the Conservatives, identified Labour's policy on successful schools and hospitals taking over failing ones as being a Tory policy, thought Labour's pledge to tighten company takeover rules was a Tory policy, and thought Labour's pledge on requiring foreign workers to speak English came from the Tories. The married couples tax allowance was the only policy that more than 50% of people correctly associated it with the party it belongs to. The moral is never overestimate the attention the public pay to politics. Most things don't make a difference because most things never register with the majority of the public at all.
Still to come tonight are polls from ComRes and YouGov.
