September's Monthly Telegraph Poll

YouGov's monthly poll is in this morning's Telegraph. The topline figures, for what little they are worth during the Conservative party's leadership interregnum, are CON 32% LAB 40% LDEM 20%.

The poll also included a wide range of Conservative party questions in advance of their conference next week.

First, since we've been discussing how few people actually know who the Conservative leadership contenders are, there was a question on recognition. People were given photos of various Conservative politicians, and asked to type in the name of the person. Almost everyone (98%) was able to correctly identify Michael Howard. Amongst the leadership contenders Ken Clarke was obviously top, identified by 83% of people, followed by David Davis who is now correctly identified by 57% and Sir Malcolm Rifkind on 47%. In contrast, Liam Fox was only identified by 19% of people, while David Cameron was only named by 10%. Boris Johnson was the third most recognised of the Tory MPs in the survey.

When YouGov asked people who they preferred as candidate their choices were, as usual, drawn from the more recognisable candidates - 28% said Clarke with Davis second with 9%. Clarke also leads amongst Tory voters by 34% to 17% for Davis.

More interesting of course is the opinion of party members, since the party leadership's failure to pass their new leadership rules last week means that the final decision will still be left to rank and file members. The result is still incredibly close

- asked who they would like to see as leader

Clarke and Davis were neck-and-neck at 30% each, while asked how they would vote in a final round contest between Clarke and Davis, Davis lead by 48% to 44%. Compared to YouGov's last poll of party members, taken almost immediately after Ken Clarke's campaign launch, the gap between Davis and Clarke on first preferences has closed, but the gap between them in a Clarke-Davis run off remains almost identical.

YouGov also asked a series of other questions which asked party members

to compare the relative merits of Clarke and Davis. Clarke won on nearly every count - by 45% to 39% they thought Clarke would be better at attracting new members, by 49% to 38% they thought Clarke would stand a better chance of winning the next election, by 56% to 33% they thought Clarke would come across better on the telly, and by 63% to 29% they thought Clarke would be a better opposition to Brown and Blair in the House of Commons. So why wasn't this reflected in their vote? Presumably because they also thought that David Davis would be far better at keeping the party united, by 52% to 35%.

Would they be right? Well, YouGov asked people who said they'd vote for Clarke in a run-off what they would do if Davis won - 6% said they would seriously consider resigning. In contrast, if Clarke won then 25% of those who voted Davis would seriously consider resigning. That's about 12% of the party membership, although it's worth remembering they only said they would "consider" resigning, which is a very different thing to actually doing it.

Back in their poll of the general public YouGov also asked questions about the Conservative party's image, about which groups in society they thought the Conservative party were closest to. Predictably the Conservative's were seen as being very close to rich people (+87) and professional and business people (+80), they were also seen as very close to country people (+42). Equally predictably they were seen as very distant from traditional Labour demographics such as trade unionists (-66), the poor (-72) and the working class (-65). They were also seen as distant from minority groups such as gay people (-49)

and ethnic minorities (-54). What should be really worrying for the Conservative party is how distant they were seen as being from all the other groups YouGov asked about - women (-27), the elderly (-28), people in towns and cities (-28), the young (-66) and - most telling of all - "people like myself" (-42).

Finally YouGov asked a question about what the Conservative party's approach to public services and taxes should be - should they commit to running public services pretty much as they are run at the moment and spending pretty much the same amount of money on them (while cutting taxes through cutting red tape) or should they cut down the role of the state, slash public spending and taxes and get private companies more involved in providing public services. Voters as a whole preferred the former by a large margin (52% to 19%), Conservative voters preferred the former by a smaller margin (53% to 39%) and potential Conservative voters (people who told YouGov they wouldn't vote Tory at the moment, but said there was quite a good chance they would in future) supported the former by an even larger margin (62% to 27%).