YouGov in the Sunday Times
A YouGov poll in the Sunday times has voting intention, with changes from YouGov's last poll, at CON 39%(nc),LAB 31%(-1), LDEM 16%(-1). The poll was conducted between Wednesday and Thursday, with the overwhelming majority of the fieldwork carried out after the news of the Iran hostage release. Full tables are available here.
A hypothetical question asking how people would vote with Brown as Labour lead has a slightly larger Tory lead, with the Conservatives on 40%, Labour on 30% and the Lib Dems on 14%. As ever, it is debatable how meaningful questions like this are as normal voting intentions don't mention the party leaders: it could be just as much a Cameron or Campbell effect. In this case YouGov have asked a second hypothetical question asking how people would vote at the next election if Tony Blair remained Labour leader: CON 39%, LAB 32%, LDEM 15%. The question still can't predict how Gordon Brown will actually score in the polls - people may see him differently once he is actually PM, but it does at least provide comparable figures - a Conservative lead of 10 points with Brown, or 7 points with Blair.
Interestingly, it tells a different story from when Populus did a similar experiment last year, when mentioning Blair and Cameron increased the Conservative lead compared to the standard question, but mentioning Brown increased it more. Now mentioning Blair and Cameron decreases the Conserative lead compared to the standard question. My guess is that the reason is that the ansers people give to pollsters when asked the standard voting intention is now starting to take into account the assumption that Brown will be Labour leader very soon, so is starting to converge towards the hypothetical Brown figures, with a Blair hypothetical question now showing a lower lead.
Following the recent budget and the negative press over the 1997 tax on pension funds, Brown also has a negative approval rating for his performance as Chancellor - 41% think Brown is doing a good well as Chancellor, 52% think he doing badly - a net approval rating of minus 11, the first time in a YouGov/Sunday Times poll that he has recorded a negative approval rating in his role as Chancellor. Tony Blair's approval rating is minus 27, Cameron's is
plus 23 (his best rating since April last year) and Sir Menzies Campbell's minus 18.
Asked who people would like to see succeeding Tony Blair as Labour leader, 22% of people perferred Gordon Brown, with David Miliband on 16%, Charles Clarke on 7%, Michael Meacher on 4% and John McDonnell on 2% - 49% of people said they didn't know. David Miliband's closeness to Brown in the question is largely down to opposition voters - amongst Labour supporters Brown is still the runaway favourite, on 55% compared to 12% for Miliband - though of course, with Labour 8 points behind in the headline voting intention figures many of those oppostion voters are people whose support they need to win back to secure a fourth term.
There is also an ICM poll in the News of the World and a BPIX poll (albeit on conducted in the middle of March) in the Observer which I'll look at properly tomorrow.
