YouGov Daily poll - 37/33/18

Tonights's Yougov tracker has topline figures of CON 37%(+1), LAB 33%(-1), LDEM 18%(+1), so the Tory lead goes back to four points. As I said yesterday, we'll never know for sure whether yesterday's two point lead was just an outlier, or whether it was a real narrowing reversed by the budget.

This poll was conducted between yesterday afternoon and this afternoon - so it is entirely after the Budget was delivered, but not necessarily after people had heard or read about it. Certainly many respondents would have answered the survey before having read the newspaper coverage of the budget this morning. While this first test of public opinion after the budget suggests it is not a game changer, there may well be more to come in the weekend polls.

My view is that the budget was more of a risk than an opportunity for Labour - Darling had no money for giveaways and the last two budgets had a strongly negative impact on Labour's poll ratings. If Labour emerge unscathed, it's probably good news for them... if they emerge unscathed - this is, after all, just one early poll and I expect we'll have a lot more to digest over the weekend.