Populus head into hung Parliament territory

Populus's monthly poll for the Times has topline figures, with changes from last month, of CON 38%(-1), LAB 30%(+1), LDEM 20%(+2).

While viewed as a single poll the changes are not particular significant, it echoes the trend seen in almost all the recent polls of showing the Conservative lead narrowing. More importantly, this really is a "proper" hung Parliament poll. In recent weeks we've seen a couple of polls showing a 10 point lead that on a strict uniform swing would have produced a hung Parliament, but in practice they'd probably have produced a Tory majority. Equally there was the famous MORI poll showing only a 6 point lead, but that was largely down to a sample that included an unusually high number of 2005 Labour voters. In contrast this poll really does put us in hung Parliament territory.

In recent months Populus have tended to show a lower Conservative lead than most other companies (and in the past thread at least one person has urged caution for that reason) - don't let that fool you. While Populus's weighting is very marginally kinder to Labour than ICM's, there's nothing in it that should produce figures that are significantly better for Labour. In short, while this is just a single poll, it should be kosher.

So, what's causing it? I put up a couple of suggestions the other day. It's possible that the Conservatives have lost support to UKIP since David Cameron's new policy on the Lisbon treaty - the ICM and YouGov polls at the weekend gave some support to that idea, both showing a small rise for UKIP. This poll however shows others down to 12%, so it doesn't seem likely it conceals a UKIP rise. Secondly there's whether Labour are putting on a better show all round, are more united and purposeful and generally making themselves look more competent - I think there may be some truth in that, certainly Gordon Brown's approval ratings, while still dire, are a lot better than in the summer. I think some of the shift may also be due to increased economic optimism, this poll found 35% now expected the economy to do well next year and found positive ratings on how well people thought they would do next year.

A final possibility is whether the government's focus on painting the Conservatives as being a party for the rich as had an effect. In his Times analysis Peter Riddell concludes it hasn't. While I tend to think the explanation lies elsewhere, I don't think we can draw Peter's conclusion from this poll. Populus found only 34% of people agreed that in view of Cameron's Eton education and "priviledge upbringing" they thought his policies were aimed at "helping rich people, rather than the whole country". However, that constrasts with the YouGov poll yesterday found 52% agreeing that the Conservatives were the party of the rich.

Neither of them can really tell us for sure if this is a factor. What we really need to know is whether the proportion of people thinking the Conservatives are only for the rich has risen or not, after all, while this question only found a minority agreeing, if the figure a month ago had been 24%, that's still a shift in opinion. As far as I can tell, there isn't a previous question we can apply either this or the YouGov question to.