Labour move to 2% lead

Partial details of the Mori poll for October are just out and show the Tories unchanged at 35% but Labour moving up a point to 37%. The online version of the FT, which is reporting the survey, does not include a figure for the Lib Dems.

It will be recalled that last month Mori became the only pollster since April to report a Labour lead. Since then there have been other surveys showing the Tories ahead, or in one case neck and neck but none reporting a Labour lead.

Unlike the other pollsters Mori use face to face interviews and, more importantly, take no measures to check out whether their sample is politically representative by asking how people voted last time and weighting accordingly.

Mori has a reputation for volatility. In the same poll a year ago it reported Labour 6% ahead, followed by a 10% margin in November which was suddenly turned round to a 9% Tory lead three weeks later.

If this week’s ICM and YouGov polls show a similar trend then things might be difficult for David Cameron.

There’s another poll today by Populus in the Times for Opinion Leader Forum. The group was “people who are inclined to vote Labour at present, but say there is a fair chance of them going to another party, and those currently inclined to vote for another party or unsure about which one to vote for, but who say there is a fair chance of switching to Labour” Amongst this Gordon Brown would be preferred as Prime Minister to David Cameron by 51% to 24%.

It is very hard to assess this without the full data because it is based on a sample 242 and is a sub-set from a larger survey involving 1,018. Normally the total number of Labour voters you would expect in such a survey would be less than 300 so we need to know how many fall within the 242. The description of the sample is not the standard Populus one for swing voters.

My guess is that the detail will show that this is not much out of line with other Populus Polls and this is just being presented in this way for a political purpose. Clearly if what the other 776 respondents had said had been favourable to Gordon then that would have been released as well.

I am making a request under the British Polling Council disclosure rules for a copy of the whole survey.

Betting news. The Deputy Labour leadership markets were taken down within an hour or so of the suggestion here on Saturday morning that Jon Cruddas was a good bet at 8/1. Will those markets return today and, if so, what will Cruddas be priced at? I for one am looking to place more money on him.

Mike Smithson