Populus shows Tory lead back up to 9
Populus's monthly poll for the Times has topline voting intentions, with changes from their last poll, of CON 40%(+3), LAB 31% (-2), LD 17% (-2). The poll was conducted between the 1st and 3rd of February.
Personally speaking the figures are a bit of a surprise, polls throughout January showed the Conservatives falling back and Populus tend to produce figures that are more flattering for Labour than some other pollsters. I'd expected a narrower Tory lead. With the last four polls showing Labour back in the 30%-33% range and the Conservatives still up in the high thirties or low forties, it looks increasingly like the ICM and MORI polls taken in late January were a brief blip.
As with the ICM poll at the weekend there does not appear to be any damage to Conservative support from the Conway affair, even though this poll would have been conducted over the weekend when the media were scrabbling around for other Tory MPs with various familial employment arrangements. In his commentary over at Political Betting Mike Smithson raises his theory that the Conservatives tend to do well whenever David Cameron is on the television even if it isn't very good for the Tories. He may be right. It may be that David Cameron just acted swiftly enough to neutralise any damage to the Tory brand.
Populus asked some specific questions covering sleaze and the Conway affair. 59% of respondents thought that MPs should be able to employ family members providing (and this is the important bit) that they are qualified, they do the job and their employment is disclosed. Compare this to the ICM poll at the weekend that asked without the qualifiers and found 74% thought MPs shouldn't be able to employ family members. The difference suggests that if you don't specify that MPs are employing familiy members who are qualified and do the work, people's natural assumption is they are on the fiddle, which probably says rather a lot about the public's view of politicians!
Asked which parties are tainted by financial sleaze, 69% thought Labour were, 51% thought the Tories were and 26% thought the Lib Dems were.
Finally, on Populus's question about whether people would trust Brown and Darling or Cameron and Osborne to run the economy if it were in trouble, Cameron and Osborne are now narrowly in the lead by 36% to 33%. With people's perceptions of the state of the economy plummetting, this is an important factor - if Labour were still ahead then people might swing back to them as the known quantity, safe hands in troubled times. The Populus figures suggest they haven't even got that card to rely on.
