Now Populus show a 20 point lead

Populus's monthly poll for the Times has topline voting intentions, with changes from last week, of CON 45%(+5), LAB 25%(-4), LDEM 20%(+1). The poll was conducted between the 3rd and 5th of June, so would have got the brunt of the Caroline Spelman coverage, which clearly doesn't appear to have dampened support for the Conservatives.

Until now only YouGov had shown a Conservative lead of twenty points or more; Populus is the first non-internet company to show a lead of this size. Until now it was possible that the huge Conservative leads shown by YouGov were some sort of artifact of internet polling - in fact I was half way through drafting up ideas for a article looking at possible reasons why YouGov was showing larger leads than the phone polling companies. It may no longer be necessary!