Populus - what would be the effect of an economic recovery?

There is a new Populus poll in the Times. They found 51% thought it would be better for Labour if Gordon Brown "quit with dignity", 43% think it would be better if he stayed.

47% of people said the Gordon Brown would deserve "only a little credit" for any economic recovery, 27% said it would deserve no credit at all.

Asked how they would react if the economy improved, 73% of people said it would make no difference to their vote, 20% said they would be more likely to vote Labour, 6% less less likely. Regular readers will know I am not a fan of questions like this, since people who are more likely are often voting for that party anyway (in this case 36% of people already voting Labour said they would be more likely to if the economy recovered) and people saying less likely may not be voting Labour anyway.

In this case it's doubly hard to interpret, since the potential positive effect (people being grateful to the government, or the government proving its actions were correct after all) are comparatively easy for people to visualise. The potential negative effect (a decrease in risk aversion and increased appetite for a change of government) is less easy to visualise. How voting intention will be impacted by an improvement in the economy is one of the great unanswered political questions in the time remaining before the election, but I'm afraid it's one that polls really can't do a very good job at answering.

There are no voting intention figures, but it's a new poll, carried out over the weekend, and with a full sample of 1000 people - so potentially we could have some voting intention figures tomorrow.