YouGov/Sun - CON 36%, LAB 41%, LDEM 10%

Tonight's YouGov poll for the Sun has topline figures of CON 36%, LAB 41%, LD 10%. A five point lead is pretty much in line with the norm. In YouGov's polls so far this month we've had the Conservatives steady at 35-37%, Labout at 40-42%, the Lib Dems at 7-10%.

Generally speaking voting intention is very steady these days. There are very minor movements, for example the Labour lead at the moment is around 5 points, in October it had narrowed to around 4 points, back in July and August it was up at around 8. The only reason we can even spot these minor and not particularly consequential variations is because of daily polling - in the old days of monthly polling it would have been completely indistinguishable from variation due to normal sample error.

It's worth noting that in the last Parliament we were rather spoilt in terms of polling volatility - the effect of Cameron's election as Tory leader, then the Brown bounce (and rapid reveral after the election-that-never-was), the government's rallying of support after the bank bailout, the effect of the expenses scandal and finally Cleggmania during the election itself. The rollercoaster of voting intention polls we experienced then are not necessarily the norm!

Compare it to the 2001-2005 Parliament, where there were significant shifts from the Iraq war and the Brent East by-election, but generally speaking the polls chuntered along quite steadily, or the 1997-2001 Parliament where, other than the fuel strikes in 2000, the polls essentially spent 5 years doing nothing whatsoever. Perhaps that's just because 1997-2005 were relatively stable political times, with Labour in the ascendent, the economy running nicely and the opposition in no fit state to make the political weather. Whatever, despite being in more turbulent times, the polls seem very flat at the moment. Since the election, we've seen a major shift of the more left-leaning Liberal Democrats from the Lib Dems towards Labour, but beyond that, all seems still...