..but the Dunfermline victor down 8 points on General Election

Lots more for poll watchers this morning with a new YouGov poll showing with changes on the last survey a fortnight ago CON 37%(-2): LAB 39%(-1): LD 15%(+2).

On the Lib Dem leadership race the poll shows that amongst all voters Campbell was backed by 18%, Hughes by 16% and Huhne by just 10%. Among party supporters it was Hughes 34%, Campbell 21% Huhne 13%.

This has caused a little flurry in the betting where Huhne has eased a touch to 0.7/1 with Campbell on 1.7/1 and Hughes tightening sharply to 13/1.

But the election is not amongst Lib Dem supporters but amongst the 74,000 Lib Dem members who were sent their ballots this week. In the last poll of them, on Wednesday, Huhne was just ahead but his lead was within the survey’s margin of error.

The General election voting intentions do not sit at ease with what happened in Dunfermline on Thursday. YouGov has both Labour and the Tories up on where they were at the General Election with the Lib Dems almost eight points behind.

One explanation for this and why YouGov is giving the party of Huhne/Campbell/Hughes the poorest rating of any pollster might be to do with the way its samples are worked out.

On the last data available YouGov weight their polls by a “party identifier” which makes up a sample of LAB 47.1%: CON 34.6%: LD 13.9%. Labour’s 47.1% weighting looks over-generous especially as it only got 36.2% last May. In a comment 289 here Peter Kellner explained how this works.

So another way of looking at the poll is that one in six of those who identify themselves as Labour supporters would not vote for the party in an immediate General Election.

My general view is the the Tories are not doing as well as they might have hoped for under their new leader, that Labour are holding their own on their General election performance but are not advancing and that the Lib Dem position in the polls is depressed by the way some of the pollsters work.

Mike Smithson