YouGov Daily poll - 36/34/17
YouGov's daily poll for the Sun has topline figures of CON 36%(-1), LAB 34%(+1), LDEM 17%(-1). Back to a very tight 2 point lead, and signs that the Lib Dem boost we saw last week is subsiding. The poll was conducted almost entirely before the budget, and wholly before the main media reaction to it tonight and tomorrow morning - so realistically it is already out of date.
I normally offer a caveat about waiting for other polls before concluding anything from a widening or narrowing of the lead. In this case we will never know. If tomorrow's poll shows a bigger Tory lead we'll never know if this was a blip, or was a genuine narrowing stamped out by the budget. If tomorrow's poll confirms this one we'll never know if this one was the beginning of a trend, or it's really a budget boost for the government and this one was just a co-incidence.
In terms of when we can expect to see a reaction to the budget, the next YouGov/Sun poll (the one that will be published in 24 hours time) went into the field late this afternoon, so will be entirely post budget and we may see an impact then. On the other hand, we may see a different result once people have watched the media reaction on the TV tonight, or in the newspapers tomorrow - if that's the case we will need too wait for the polls in the Sunday papers for the full story. Time will tell.
