New YouGov and ComRes polls

Two new polls tonight. Firstly ComRes for the Independent have topline figures, with changes from their last poll in mid February, of CON 37%(-1), LAB 32%(+2), LDEM 19%(-1). It is ComRes's smallest Tory lead since December 2008, and is in line with the recent polls from MORI and YouGov which have also shown the polls sharply narrowing.

Perhaps more eagerly awaited will be the YouGov daily poll following the shock 2 point lead at the weekend. The topline figures with changes from that are CON 39%(+2), LAB 32%(-3), LDEM 17%(nc). It appears from this that the weekend poll was most likely an outlier, and that the Conservatives had a lead of about 6 points or so all along. Polls on the fringes of the margin of error are unavoidable, the benefit of daily polling is at least that we only have to wait 24 hours to identify them.

Of course, in theory it is possible that Labour did narrow the gap before the weekend, but that David Cameron pulled it back over the weekend (or perhaps more likely, that it was a mixture of the two with a genuine narrowing of the lead, exaggerated by random sample error) - the reality is that we'll never know.

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