YouGov/Sun 41/40/11 (plus AV polling)
YouGov's daily voting intention figures tonight - the first since the tuition fees announcement - are CON 41%, LAB 40%, LDEM 11%. Government approval is minus 7, not the lowest they've been (there were a couple of minus 8's last month) but significantly down on the positive figures we've seen since conference.
It's too early to say this is a negative reaction to the fees announcement - it could just be coincidence. Yesterday's daily poll had a seven point Conservative lead which I expect was just an outlier, other than that polls over the last week or so have been pretty consistent in show a four point lead or thereabouts. This could be a knock from the tuition fees announcement... or just an outlier in the opposite direction to yesterdays'. We'll see.
On other matters, on the YouGov website there are also results from a large poll on the AV referendum for the Constitution Society. This contained a similar exercise to the YouGov poll in the summer that asked people how they would vote in an AV referendum, then exposed to them to various pro- and anti- arguments on AV, along with questions about what they wanted from an electoral system, which parties would benefit and so on to encourage them to think around the issues. At the end of the survey they were asked again, and once again opinion had shifted further against AV.
Unlike at the time of the Summer exercise of course, YouGov's regular tracker is now showing a steady lead for the NO campaign anyway. The last time it was asked was the 5th October, which had the YES campaign on 35%, NO on 40%.
On the subject of the referendum, the bill was amended on Tuesday to change the question - the new wording is "At present, the UK uses the “first past the post” system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the “alternative vote” system be used instead?"
