Populus has parties neck and neck
Populus's monthly poll for the Times has the Conservative and Labour parties neck and neck on 35%. The topline figures, with changes from Populus's poll last month, are CON 35%(-2), LAB 35%(-1), LDEM 20%(+2). As with other recent polls the Liberal Democrats have recovered from the decline they suffered after Charlie Kennedy's resignation, in fact they are one point higher than in December's Populus poll, though it is far too early to tell if this signifies any sort of bounce from Ming Campbell's leadership.
The poll was conducted over the weekend when the David Mills saga was receiving heavy press coverage. Asked if the Labour government was sleazier than the last Conservative government a large majority (67%) thought the two were as bad as one another, with 16% thinking Labour were worse than the last Tory government and 11% thinking the Tories were more sleazy. While obviously this finding could be far worse for Labour (people could think the Tories weren't sleazy!), it should probably be a cause for concern that 83% of the population view them as being as bad or worse than a government that became a by-word for sleaze.
Asked if “allegations are fairly investigated and, if ministers have done wrong, they are forced to resign or the Prime Minister sacks them”, or the government “brushes the allegations under the carpet and ministers often keep their jobs regardless of whether they have done wrong”, 58% of people think that allegations are swept under the carpet while 38% of people think they are properly investigated.
Populus also asked a hypothetical voting intention question with Gordon Brown as Labour leader. Unlike the weekend's BPIX poll which showed Labour narrowing the gap under Brown, Populus's findings continue to suggest that Labour would do far worse relative to the Conservatives under Gordon Brown's leadership with support at CON 40%, LAB 34%, LDEM 20%. The figures for this question do not have topline adjustment in the same way that the main poll does, but I'm assured that the number of people it would have involved reallocating are so small that it wouldn't have made any real difference anyway.
Interestingly while the Conservatives gain support with Brown as Labour leader, the main losers are the "Others". This probably partially due to the way the question is asked - giving the party leaders' names for the three main parties probably artificially depresses the support for the "other" parties whose leaders aren't given a namecheck. Either way, it probably isn't a case of "other" voters magically voting Tory if Gordon Brown becomes PM - the changes in voting behaviour almost certainly contain a fair amount of 'churn'. The detailled figures for the last ICM and Populus polls to ask this question show the the overwhelming majority of current Conservative supporters would also vote Conservative in a Cameron vs Brown race, but that there is a small movement of support to the Conservatives from both the Lib Dems and Labour, as well as shifts of support in both directions between Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
