What is the real Tory lead?
Over the last couple of weeks we've seen some apparently contrasting polls - have the Conservative lead dropped to single figures or not? Different polls have told different stories (and sometimes lead to people jumping the gun and thinking the Labour recovery has stalled or reversed). What is the actual picture?
Well, looking at polls since the bank bailout was announced in October the pollsters are actually all showing very similar levels of support for the Conservatives. Leaving aside BPIX whose high Conservative scores we can't really speculate about given the lack of details about their methodology, other pollsters have ben pretty solid in showing the Tories in the 41%-43% range.
The difference is more in the Labour level of support, and here I think we are seeing a knock on effect from the Liberal Democrat and "Other" scores. The lower levels of Labour support have come from ICM and ComRes who are respectively the pollsters who show a higher level of Lib Dem support and a higher level of support for "Others". YouGov, who tend to show the lowest level of Lib Dem support, have shown some of the narrowest leads for the Conservatives.
The wider pattern seems to be that the Conservative support, while dropping from their highest scores, has been quite resilient and stayed above 40%. The narrowing lead has largely come from non-Conservative supporters rallying to the Labour party. With that in mind it makes sense that the pollsters with the methodologies that show the highest support for Lib Dems and others will produce a lower level of Labour support.
