The post-speech polls
The first poll conducted after Cameron's Europe speech, YouGov's on Friday, didn't appear to show any impact on voting intention. However, this weekend we have a further four polls conducted after the speech (the Opinium one was mostly done prior to the speech). Here they are:
Angus Reid/Sunday Express have the Conservatives on 30% (up three) and Labour on 39% (down three) - the online version of the article doesn't mention the UKIP or Lib Dem scores. The poll was conducted on Thursday and Friday.
ComRes/IoS/Sunday Mirror has the Conservatives up 5 on 33%, Labour unchanged on 39%, UKIP down 4 points on 10%. As I wrote yesterday, some of this appears to be due to ComRes treating likelihood to vote differently in their December poll, but even with consistent treatment of likelihood to vote the poll would have shown the Conservatives up 4 or 5 points, though it would probably also have shown Labour down slightly.
Survation/Mail on Sunday has the Conservatives on 31%, up two, Labour unchanged on 38% and UKIP down two on 14%.
YouGov in the Sunday Times has topline figures of CON 35%, LAB 41%, LDEM 12%, UKIP 7%. Compared to the average of YouGov's polls last week that equates to the Conservatives being up by about two, Labour down by about two and UKIP down by about one.
In each individual poll the changes are relatively small, but they are consistent across the pollsters, so we can be fairly confident that the Conservatives have enjoyed a small boost from the referendum promise and the positive publicity around it. UKIP appear to have dropped slightly, but not massively (the biggest drop they had, that in the ComRes poll, was mostly due to methodological variation). The shift is hardly a game changing degree though.
Looking at the other questions, there is some stark variation in how people say they'd vote in an EU referendum. YouGov's figures are very similar to what they were showing early in the week - in a straight referendum question 37% say they would vote to stay, 39% say they would vote to leave. If David Cameron were to renegotiate and recommend a yes vote then 50% of people say they would vote to stay, compared to 25% who would vote to leave - the contrast is almost entirely down to Conservative voters, who would currently vote to leave, but would vote to stay on renegotiated terms.
Angus Reid asked how people would vote if Cameron did manage to repatriate some powers, 34% said they would vote to stay in, 34% said they would vote to leave.
Survation found 50% saying Britain should leave the EU, 36% that they should stay. If Cameron wins back some powers, 43% of those saying Britain should leave say they would consider voting to stay.
