Two new ICM polls

I'll post some thoughts about the general election later, but first a brief note on the two ICM polls today (yes, two seperate polls). Earlier today we had the usual regular ICM poll - Martin Boon had said he was disclined to publish because the fieldwork was done over the Easter weekend, and we pollsters tend to be a little wary of fieldwork over bank holiday weekends. Calling a general election made the result rather more relevant though, so out it came - topline figures were CON 44%, LAB 26%, LDEM 10%, UKIP 11%.

Later on in the day we got an ICM "flash poll" conducted after the election announcement, with fieldwork in space of four hours. That had voting intentions of CON 46%, LAB 25%, LDEM 11%, UKIP 8%, GRN 4%. The poll also asked about the decision to call an election, finding 55% supported an early election, 15% were against. Full tabs for that are here.

A note about the methodology, the flash poll appears to be a proper ICM poll using all their normal methods and normal weights... just conducted very quickly. Whether that makes any difference is unclear (people who reply quickly or reply during the daytime may or may not be different in ways that may or may not be adequated corrected by weighting) - notably the UKIP score is the lowest we've seen from ICM. It remains to be seen if that's reflected in future polls, is a result of the methodology, or is just normal random variation.