Will this make Brown cautious about an early election?
CON 40% (38)
LAB 29% (31)
LD 21% (19)
Tory lead up four with ComRes
The poll is being published in tomorrow’s Indy on Sunday and the numbers should provide a lot of relief at Cameron Towers and something of a boost to the Lib Dems.
For after a period when most pollsters had both Labour and the Tories in the 30s we now revert back to what was almost the status quo – Labour in the 20s with Cameron’s party in the 40s again.
A key factor in the poll is likelihood to vote and this is where Labour are suffering and the Tories are benefiting.
Andrew Hawkins, the ComRes CEO notes that turnout figures are significantly depressed compared to February 2005 levels: today’s poll shows 44% ‘absolutely certain’ to vote compared with 56% in 2005, while today 18% say they are ‘certain not to vote’ compared to only 11% in 2005.
The figures point to Labour voters threatening to stay away on election day: 24% of DEs are ‘certain not to vote’, almost twice the 13% of that group who said the same in February 2005. The past voting numbers show that 72% of Labour’s 2005 voters intend to vote for that party now, compared with 91% of 2005 Conservative voters.
My guess is that the the voting proportions will rise once we get into the campaign proper.
I would discuss the non-voting questions in detail but frankly they are a nonsense. The statement “David Cameron is a slick salesman but I worry about what he is like underneath” had 56% agreeing to 36% disagreeing. That’s a leading question if ever I saw one. The same goes for the 50-43% split on “Gordon Brown having a warm side“.
Come on ComRes – you can do better than that.
UPDATE: The detailed data is now out here and has one very worrying figure for Labour. Of those saying they would vote for the party 26% did not turnout in 2005 while the figure for the Tories was 16%. All the evidence suggests that people who voted last time are much more likely to vote this time and ICM is scaling down the weightings attach to 2005 non-voters.