YouGov/Times - CON 40%, LAB 41%, LDEM 9%

YouGov's first voting intention poll of the year looks very much like the polls at the end of last year. Topline figures are CON 40% (nc), LAB 41%(-1), LDEM 9%(+2). Fieldwork was on Sunday and Monday and changes are from mid-December. For the record, the nine point share for the Lib Dems is the highest that YouGov have shown since the election, though I would urge my usual caution about reading too much into that unless it is echoed by other polls. Full tables are here.

Most of YouGov's regular trackers in the poll show a similar lack of movement: Theresa May continues to have a modest point lead over Jeremy Corbyn on who would make the better Prime Minister (37% to 31%), a majority (59%) of people think that the government are handling Brexit negotiations badly, and slightly more people think that Brexit was the wrong decision (46%) than the right decision (42%).

The one striking change since the last poll is how health has risen up the political agenda. 53% of respondents picked health as one of the most important issues facing the country, up fourteen points since the last YouGov poll (though still behind Brexit on 60%). It is by no means unusual for health to rise up the agenda at this time of year on the back of media coverage of the NHS struggling to cope in the winter months, but this is an unusually large rise and the 53% figure is the highest YouGov have recorded since they started asking this question in 2010.