CONSERVATIVES 43% (+2)
LABOUR 28% (-4)
LIB DEMS 16% (+1)

Brown’s party now trailing by 15 points

As ConservativeHome has broken the embargo I will do so as well. Tim Montgomerie should not have done that. See note below.

The ComRes poll for tomorrow’s Indy is now out and will add to the gloom at Brown Central. For the party’s share is down to 28% – the first time it has dropped below the 30 mark in any poll from any organisation since September.

So four of the pollsters that regularly do GB voting intention surveys now have the Tories with a double digit lead which would be sufficient at a general election, to give the party a comfortable majority.

The numbers are probably more important for the impact they will have on Labour’s spirits than as an election prediction – particularly as they come from the same firm that only seven weeks ago had the party just one point behind.

To have seen things fall away so fast must be quite hard. Conversely the Tories have shown once again that they can recover which will reinforce Cameron’s position as the general election gets closer.

For Nick Clegg there will be welcome relief that ComRes has them with a reasonable share. Back in November they were down to 12%.

The firm uses past vote weighting to make its samples politically representative though the way this works out in operation is a little different to the other past vote weighting pollsters, Populus and ICM.

With a bit of luck the next poll – the ICM survey for the Guardian – should be available tomorrow night.

NOTE ABOUT THE EMBARGO: In the original first paragraphs of this piece I said that PB was breaking the 10pm embargo on the poll because Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome had had announced details on his site few minutes earlier. I have now been assured by Tim that he heard about the poll from a source other than the pollster and so was not breaking the embargo. My apologies for suggesting otherwise.