Tory lead falling in latest Populus poll
Populus's monthly poll for the Times has topline voting intention figures, with changes from last month, of CON 37%(-3), LAB 34%(+3), LDEM 19%(+2). The poll was conducted between the 7th and the 9th.
It's always a mistake to read too much into a single poll, the normal random variation we see from poll to poll could have one drawing conclusions in any direction you wanted - for example, given their methodology is almost identical to ICM's the 9 point Tory lead recorded by Populus last month seemed somewhat out of line and probably flattered them somewhat - in this case though the collective picture across all the polls now seems to be one of a falling Tory lead, even YouGov who in recent months have recorded the largest Tory leads have shown leads in the 6-7 point range rather than the 8-10 point leads they showed at the start of the year.
The increase in the level of Lib Dem support in this poll may be thanks to the increased publicity they received during the EU referendum debate - an exampe of the old maxim that no publicity is bad publicity, though it could equally be just a reversion to the mean after an outlier; again, Populus's methodology is almost identical to ICM's, so January/February figures with Populus showing the Lib Dems at 17% and ICM with them at 21% could never have been sustained. The fieldwork was carried out before Nick Clegg's conference speech, so any boost they recieve from his first real set-piece outing won't show up until the next polls.
Even if publicity has boosted the Lib Dems, it hasn't boosted Nick Clegg. The average rating of his leadership is now at 4.16, slightly below Ming Campbell's nadir (for contrast, IDS fell to 4.00 in Spring 2003.) The only saving grace for Clegg is that there were probably a large proportion of don't knows to the question (in January it was 39%, but we won't know till the tables come out). For the other leaders Gordon Brown remains down at 4.59 and David Cameron is up at 5.23, only marginally below his position during his honeymoon in January 2006.
On other underlying figures there is no shift back to the government either. The percentage of people dissatisfied with the government also crept up. This is a pattern we've seen in other companies polls too - a position where the underlying figures on things like the economy, best PM, leader approval and so on suggest no shift back towards Labour, but where the topline voting intention figures show a falling Tory lead - my guess is that the reason is that the larger Conservative leads at the end of last year were never 'real', they were the product of a government that appeared to be in crisis - now they have ridden that out we are seeing a more genuine position.
Meanwhile, after those contradictory polls for the Lib Dems and iwantareferendum Populus also asked a question on the EU referendum that gave people all the options - no referendum at all, a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, a referendum on EU membership or a referendum on both the treaty and EU membership. The latter was the most popular, the preference of 36% of respondents, 19% no referendum at all, 18% on just the treaty and just 16% on EU membership alone.
