Saturday night polls
We should have a truckload of polls tonight. There is a new Opinium, a new ComRes for the Indy & Sunday Mirror, YouGov for the Sunday Times, probably an ORB and perhaps an ICM for the Sun on Sunday. I've seen rumours of Survation too (they normally poll for the Mail on Sunday) and we're overdue a Panelbase poll. The thing to look for is whether polls continue to show a narrowing of the Conservative lead - keep an eye on the fieldwork dates, more recent polls could be showing an impact from reactions to the bombing (or, indeed, the effects of the dementia tax row fading). Also remember the house effects I wrote about earlier - ICM and ComRes tend to show larger Tory leads anyway, so even if they show a significant movement towards Labour it may still leave the Tories with a good lead.
The first poll we actually have figures for is Opinium, who have topline figures of CON 45%(-1), LAB 35%(+2), LDEM 7%(-1), UKIP 5%(nc). Changes are from the previous week and fieldwork was on Tuesday and Wednesday, so just after the Manchester bombing but before political campaigning had resumed. We have movement towards Labour, but the Conservatives still managing to cling onto a double-digit lead. Tabs are here.
ComRes for the Sunday Mirror and Independent have topline figures of CON 46%(-2), LAB 34%(+4), LDEM 8%(-2), UKIP 5%(nc). Changes are from a fortnight ago, and fieldwork was between Wednesday and Friday. The Tory lead has dropped by six points, but ComRes tends to give the Conservatives some of their better figures, so this still leaves them with a twelve point lead. Tabs are here.
ORB for the Telegraph have topline figures of CON 44%(-2), LAB 38%(+4), LDEM 7%(nc), UKIP 5%(-2). Changes are from a week ago and fieldwork was Wednesday to Thursday. Once again, we have a narrowing of the Tory lead, in this case down to six points.
YouGov for the Sunday Times have topline figures of CON 43%(nc), LAB 36%(-2), LDEM 9%(-1), UKIP 4%(nc). Changes are from the Times poll earlier in the week and fieldwork was Thursday to Friday. This is the most recent of the polls we've seen so far tonight, and it has Labour falling back a bit from the YouGov poll in the week. That said, it is only one poll, so don't read too much into that unless we see other polls showing a similar pattern.
ICM for the Sun on Sunday has toplines of CON 46%(-1), LAB 32%(-1), LDEM 8%(-1), UKIP 5%(+1). Fieldwork was on Wednesday to Friday, and changes are since the ICM/Guardian poll conducted over last weekend. Changes here seem quite steady (ICM's previous poll already showed a sharp narrowing of the lead). As I said earlier, ICM and ComRes tend to show the largest Tory leads because of their demographic based turnout model.
I'll update this post through the evening as other polls appear.
