Populus gives Tories a 6% lead if Brown becomes Labour leader

Our Labour General Election Index – showing the implied probability of the party winning most seats based on best betting prices – has moved just two per cent on the week in spite of all the hype associated with the change of Tory leader.

We have restricted the graph to just the seven days since David Cameron was elected leader and, as can be seen, the change has been from 58.5% to 56.5% – the biggest movement being caused by the polls at the weekend.

The betting market is on which party wins most seats – not on whether Labour retains an overall majority or whether the Tories can form a Government.

Meanwhile there’s a new poll this morning from Populus in the Times showing the following shares with changes on the last poll five weeks ago. This has CON 35 (+3): LAB 38 (-2): LD 19 (nc). So the improvement in the Tory position seen in the YouGov and ICM surveys is also reflected in Populus.

Like the recent ICM and YouGov polls the Populus survey also found that Cameron’s Conservatives would do substantially better if Gordon Brown was leading Labour. The split would be CON 41 to LAB 35. A month ago Populus asked the same question and showed a 2 point lead for the Chancellor.

Our story yesterday suggesting that Brown might be an electoral liability caused some controversy and was described as “utter tosh” by one poster. Well now three pollsters are painting the same picture about Brown and it is hard to see this not having an impact.

Mike Smithson