YouGov Daily figures - 37/30/21

The daily figures from YouGov are CON 37%(-3), LAB 30%(+1), LDEM 21%(+3).

Short term changes are slightly surprising - the Lib Dems appear to have gained rather than Labour - but I expect that's down to sample variation. The bigger picture is that Labour have reached 30% and the Conservative lead is down to 7 points. Obviously we're down into hung Parliament territory here.

Before people get excited though, this is just the sort of conference boost we'd expect. Even without daily polling, polls that used to crop up on the middle of conference in past years showed the same sort of thing (last year YouGov had the Tories going from a 20 point lead before the Labour conference to a 10 point one straight afterwards). Most of the time they don't last, and we should expect the Conservatives to benefit next week in exactly the same way that the Lib Dems and Labour have these past two weeks. The interesting thing would be if they didn't.

Fieldwork for this poll began after Gordon Brown's speech yesterday, but obviously many people would have answered it before they saw any coverage (and certainly before today's newpaper coverage) so there might be more to come. On the other hand, for the Lib Dem conference their peak was the day after Nick Clegg's speech, so this might well turn out to be Labour's peak too (especially since their coverage now seems to have been swamped by negative stuff about the Sun endorsing the Conservatives). We'll see tomorrow at 5.05pm.

The survey also repeated questions on Brown's approval ratings and whether he should step down from earlier Daily surveys. His net approval is at minus 32, up from minus 37 before the speech. 47% of people think he should replaced as Labour leader, down from 50%.

On other questions, 59% thought that a referendum on AV would be a good idea. Asked how they would vote in such a referendum, 26% said they would vote for FPTP, 43% for AV.