..and the pollster reports a 13% lead if it’s Cameron vs Brown

A huge boost for David Cameron’s Tories is reported to be in tomorrow’s ICM poll for the Guardian. According to CONHome the figures are with changes on last month CON 40 (+3): LAB 31 (nc): LD 19% (-4).

This is only the third time that ICM has recorded a 40% share or more for the Tories in a decade and a half and the nine point margin puts the party in a situation where it could conceive of a parliamentary majority.

On the second question to be asked in the poll – how would you vote if it was Cameron’s Tories vs Brown’s Labour vs Ming’s Lib Dems – there’s an even bigger boost for the Tories. The shares are with comparisons on January – CON 42% (+2): LAB 29% (-3%): LD 17% (-3).

The 13% Tory margin on this question is by far the largest that any pollster has recorded since Cameron became Tory leader in December 2005.

So again we have ICM being the pollster that is finding the largest Tory shares. The named leader question is in sharp contrast to what Populus found just two weeks ago. Then Labour’s relative position against the Tories was 2% better with the Chancellor in charge. ICM has Brown’s Labour doing 4% worse.

There has been a big change in the way that Populus is asking this question and in their current forms the approaches of the two pollsters cannot be compared with each other. I will do another piece on this during the week.

I have long said that the only thing that stands between Gordon and Number 10 are bad poll findings. Well they don’t come much worse than this.

A lot will depend on how the Guardian choose to report the poll tomorrow. In the betting Gordon is still at 0.19/1 for leader – maybe that will change a bit tomorrow.

Mike Smithson