YouGov/Sun - CON 35, LAB 34, LD 7, UKIP 13, GRN 5

Last night's YouGov/Sun poll has topline figures of CON 35%, LAB 34%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 13%, GRN 5%. The one point Tory lead is actually the first for twelve days. Usual caveats apply of course, it's well within normal sample variation and is a single poll.

The Sun also have some YouGov polling testing out the potential of the Conservative's attack on the risk of a Labour/SNP deal, which in recent days appears to have become the dominant thrust of their campaign. Results are here. As all my regular readers will know, questions saying "will X make you more likely to vote Y" are essentially rubbish - if they work, you'll see it in the topline figures. This was an attempt to measure the potential for a message, to gauge how many people might agree with the message itself, as only then can they be persuaded by it. Essentially it went through the various steps and assumptions of the Tory argument, to see how many people were open to it - kicking out those people who actually quite like the idea of an SNP deal, don't think it would actually happen or would still prefer it to the Tories.

So, about a third of people are already voting Tory, so it doesn't matter if they buy into the narrative or not, they can only vote Tory once. Next there is whether or not people actually think a Labour and SNP deal is a realistic option - 39% of people, including most Labour voters, think there either won't be a hung Parliament or that Labour would not enter into any sort of agreement with the SNP. Then there are 8% of people who think that a Labour government with SNP support is likely, and would be a good thing, the Conservative argument will fall flat with them. Finally YouGov asked the remainder if they'd prefer a Conservative government to a Labour-SNP deal and took away those 6% respondents who thought a Labour government reliant on SNP support was a bad thing but would still prefer it to a Tory government.

Take away all those groups and YouGov were left with 8% of the electorate who think a Lab/SNP deal of some sort is likely AND think this would be a bad thing AND think a Tory government would be preferable BUT are not already voting Tory. That's actually a significant chunk of people and is presumably the voters who the Conservative party are targetting with their current campaign - they are mostly made up of don't knows, Lib Dems and Ukippers, the message seems to have very little potential to move people directly from Labour to the Tories. The challenge for the Tories is how many (if any) of that 8% of people they can get to go that one step further and vote Tory. The early weeks of the Tory campaign didn't seem to have any effect on voters at all - this message does at least seem to have potential for them. Whether or not they manage to translate it into votes remains to be seen.