Populus show Tory lead back into double figures
With the clear trend having been towards Labour since Gordon Brown's bail out of the British banks, right at the tail end of last year we saw a couple of YouGov polls that indicated the trend might be moving back towards the Conservatives. The first poll of 2009 from Populus certainly appears to back that up. The topline figures, with changes from Populus's December poll, are CON 43%(+4), LAB 33%(-2), LDEM 15%(-2). The poll was conducted between the 9th and 11th January. It puts the Conservatives back above the psychologically important 40% level and back in an election winning position, which will no doubt deliver them dividends in terms of morale and media narrative.
Other measures are also moving away from Labour again, Brown & Darling's lead on dealing with the economic problems has dropped to 3 points from 9 last month, Gordon Brown's lead as the best PM right now to deal with the economy has gone from 7 points last month to 0 now (as Peter Riddell points out in his commentary, it was as high as 20 points back in November) and Cameron's 2 point lead on being the best PM after the next election a month ago has grown to 12 points.
As ever, we need to be slightly wary when the polls appear to change direction - one man's beginning of trend is another man's rogue poll - but with YouGov and Populus now showing the boost in Labour's support from their handling of the economic crisis now beginning to wane, it is looking as if the Brown economic bounce is coming to at an end.
The poll also shows economic confidence falling again, after the rather counterintuitive increase towards the end of last year. While the sharp contrast between people's pessimism about the economy as a whole and their relative optimism about their personal fiances remains, both have dropped since Populus last asked the question. In November net economic confidence for the country had rallied to minus 35, now it is down to
minus 61, lower than it was in the summer. In November Populus record net economic confidence for people's own families had actually returned to positive territory at plus 7, now it is down to minus 4, still far above the lows it hit in the summer.
