YouGov - 40/42/9 and Lord Ashcroft's Lib Dem polling

YouGov's weekly poll for the Sunday Times has topline figures of CON 40%, LAB 42%, LDEM 9%. It's the first time YouGov have shown Labour pulling ahead of the Conservatives since just after the first big student protests in November (the one where the building containing Conservative party HQ was invaded).

I'm not sure if this is co-incidence or not - it could be the Labour leads both then and now are the effect of highlighting an unpopular government policy or unhappiness with the government. Alternatively today's could just be an outlier. Even if it isn't, there have been so many protests in recent weeks that whenever Labour went ahead there was bound to have been some sort of protest in the days leading up to it.

Meanwhile I've had a closer look at the Lib Dem polling from Lord Ashcroft. I am assuming that all this polling is from Populus, who usually do work for Lord Ashcroft, but annoying his report doesn't seem to actually mention it.The tabs for Lord Ashcroft's polling aren't up on his site yet, since the most interesting things will probably be the cross-breaks for lost Lib Dems and retained Lib Dems and the comparison between them. Still looking what's released so far...

Lord Ashcroft commissioned a poll of 2000 people who voted Liberal Democrat in May in Lib Dem seats - basically those that matter when it comes to defending Lib Dem seats come the next election.

Looking first at peoples reasons for voting Liberal Democrat, the poll asked people to say in their own words why they voted Liberal Democrat (clearly from the numbers people were able to give more than one reason). 34% said they supported Lib Dem policies or values, up to 57% (since people could have fallen into multiple candidates) said they voted for negative reasons - that they didn't like Labour or the Tories or both, or it was time for a change from them, up to 32% said their local Lib Dem MP was good or there was strong Lib Dem support in their local area.

These answers have both positive and negative sides for the Lib Dems - the proportion who cite reasons like time for a change, not liking the Conservatives or not liking the main parties is very high, and lots of that support will be vulnerable (since the Lib Dems won't be a change, and will have been in coalition with one of the main parties).

More positive is the high proportion of people who said the main reason for their vote is high regard for their local MP. These voters will presumably be less concerned about the Lib Dem party, though it's important not to overegg this difference - at the end of the survey the poll asked how people thought they would vote come the 2015 election - while people who said they voted Lib Dem because of their local MP were most loyal to the party, still only 64% said they would vote Lib Dem, compared to 54% overall.

It's also worth noting that if 46% of Lib Dem voters in Lib Dem seats are saying they are likely not to support the party in 2015, then it suggests that the Lib Dem vote in Lib Dems seats is not behaving drastically differently to elsewhere.

Turning to attitudes to the coalition, about half of 2010 Lib Dem voters who gave an opinion say the Liberal Democrats made the right decision to enter coalition, 21% say they should have gone with Labour with the rest saying they should have remained in opposition. 36% of Lib Dem voters say they wouldn't have voted Lib Dem at the last election had they known the party was going to enter coalition with the Conservatives.

In most policy areas few 2010 Lib Dem voters thought the presence of the party in the coalition had made the government's policies better. The highest scoring ones were welfare reform (where 37% thought they had improved policies) and the environment (where 32% thought they had made things better). On tuition fees only 11% thought the

Lib Dems had made the policy better, and 49% thought they had made it worse (a bizarre finding. I expect this is actually people expressing their anger over the Liberal Democrat stance on tuition fees, rather than people who actually think the Conservatives on their own would have carried out some tuition fees policy that was closer to their preference).