YouGov/Sunday Times - CON 33, LAB 44, LD 9, UKIP 8

The weekly YouGov poll for the Sunday Times is online here - topline figures are CON 33%, LAB 44%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 8% - all very much in line with the usual picture. I haven't had chance to go through the ad hoc questions, this week covering the BBC and tax avoidance, but there are a couple of interesting findings in the regular trackers.

On the leader ratings David Cameron is on minus 17 (from minus 16 last week), Ed Miliband is on minus 21 (from minus 18 last week). It's worth noting that both of them seem to have consolidated the increases they got from their party conferences. Prior to the Tory party conference David Cameron's ratings were pretty consistently in the negative mid-twenties, since the conference they have been pretty steady in the negative mid-to-high teens. Ed Miliband's ratings pre-conference were also in the negative mid-twenties and while they have declined from the immediate post-conference peak, they seem to be settling in the negative high-teens/low-twenties.

While there does appear to have been a real change in the party leader approval ratings, the same can't be said for the economic trackers. We saw an increase in the percentage of people thinking their economic circumstances after the GDP figures came out last month and for a brief period the public were the most optimistic they'd been for two years. It has not lasted - the economic trackers are back to the sort of pessimism we saw before the GDP figures. Asked how they see the economy, 38% think things are still getting worse, 35% think things have stopped getting worse, but there is no sign of any recovery, 21% think there are signs of recovery, just 2% think that the economy is on the way to full recovery.