The Guardian’s pollster shows the party has a 10% lead

The vote shares in this month’s ICM poll for the Guardian are just out and show a big move away from Labour with the party down below 30%. The actual vote shares are with changes on the last survey from the pollster taken just after the Tory party conference CON 39 (+1): LAB 29 (-3): LD 22 (+2).

The movements are in line with yesterday’s Communicate Research survey and compare markedly with Mori which on Monday reported a 2% Labour lead.

It is important to note that the Mori fieldwork took place a week earlier than the ICM and CR surveys where the Tories clearly benefited from the big media exposure at the end of last week for their plans on taxation.

This survey is one in the eye for those pundits, like Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer and John Rentoul in the Indy on Sunday, who had argued that David Cameron and George Osborne had committed an enormous blunder with their tax announcement.

This also reinforces my strong view that what boosts the Tories in the polls is media coverage, particularly featuring Cameron. The Labour and Brown strategy must be to do nothing which gives the Tory leader any prominence. The coverage of last week’s announcement went on for a day longer because Labour launched a pre-emptive strike against it.

Mike Smithson