Polling agony for the Tories as even YouGov shows big Labour lead

At the end of a fairly torrid week for the Tories the internet pollster, YouGov, in the Telegraph this morning is showing a Labour lead of 5% – up from level-pegging just a few days ago. The big beneficiary of a Tory fall of 3% has been the Lib Dems who are now at 22%.

The headline figures are: LAB 38 (+2): CON 33 (-3): LD 22 (+2) and are very much in line with the other polls this week.

It is hard to see how Michael Howard can maintain his hope of becoming the next Prime Minister

It is becoming a bit harder to assess YouGov because the level of detail they used to provide on their site has been cut-back.

YOUGOV FORM NOTE. YouGov is traditionally the least volatile of the pollsters and has usually been the one showing the best Tory positions which has been in spite of its past vote weighting recall formula. Poll watchers have never been able to work out how this can be when its target proportion of those saying they voted Labour last time is a third more than actually did so. They came out best at the Euro elections last June with the Tory/Labour split and at the Scottish elections in 2003. The did badly, however, with their UKIP overstatement and were showing a Kerry victory in the White House race.

The only consolation for the Tories is that in almost all elections of modern times the party that was in second place at the start of the final week has done better on polling day.

We expect a big move to Labour on the commons seats markets and growing support for the Lib Dems across the board.

Mike Smithson