YouGov put the Tories 6 points ahead
A new YouGov poll for the Sunday Times has voting intention figures, with changes from YouGov's previous poll at the end of October, of CON 41% (nc), LAB 35% (-3), LDEM 13% (+2). No dates yet, but the poll would probably have been conducted between Thursday and Saturday.
After some incredibly volatile polls over the last few months I think we are at last beginning to see a clear picture in the polls. With the exception of Populus who have them slightly lower, Conservative support seems to have steadied in the low fourties - YouGov have had them at 41% for three polls in a row, Ipsos-MORI at 40-41 for three polls, ICM at 40-43% for three polls. Interestingly thir support seems to have settled at a higher level than before the Blair to Brown handover, the reason that they are not recording larger leads than they were back then is that is has also increased Labour's support. All the pollsters have Labour in the mid-thirties, whereas during Blair's long goodbye they were languishing in the low thirties - of course, Labour are still falling, we don't know if trend will continue downwards, stay in the mid-thiries, recover or whatever.
Finally, the increase in Lib Dem support from YouGov's poll means that all the polling companies have shown the Liberal Democrats recovering slightly, presumably thanks to the publicity of their leadership election - their ratings are still very low compared to the past few years, but their trend is upwards. Obviously it remains to be seen what happens to their support once their new leader is chosen.
UPDATE: Looking at the rest of the figures, Gordon Brown's ratings have slumped - down from +30 the last time YouGov asked the question using this wording to -10 now, David Cameron's are also down slightly at +15 rather than +20 in the last poll, which was done straight after his conference speech.
The poll also asked about Gordon Brown's relationship with President Bush. An overwhelming 74% of people think Brown is less close to Bush than Tony Blair was, and they tend to approve of this. Only 10% think he is too distant from President Bush, 45% think he has the relationship about right. 21% would like him to be still more distant.
YouGov also asked about expectations of house prices next year - 33% expect them to continue rising, 25% expect them to drop.
There is surprisingly little here compared to the amount of polling the Sunday Times normally do - in the past they've done a nice series of consistent questions about preceptions of Gordon Brown's and David Cameron's characters, I didhope they'd do them again. More likely they've done something that isn't time sensitive that they can publish at a later date.
