Has Brown been hurt by the Ashdown cabinet row?

With every bit of detail in every poll being scrutinised to the nth degree at the moment there’s very disappointing news for Labour this morning with the June poll by Communicate Research in the Independent. After the Ipsos-Mori survey showing them 3% they must have been hoping that other pollsters would follow suit.

The topline CR figures with with changes from May survey are CON 37%(+2): LAB 32%(+1): LD 18%(-1) – so reassuring data for David Cameron who has been almost totally squeezed out of the news of late.

CR is the newest pollster carrying out monthly surveys and has been changing its methodology. When the series for the Independent began last October it did not operate past vote weighting to ensure a politically balanced samples. That was altered early in 2007 and in April CR had Labour down to just 27%. Ipsos-Mori is now the only UK pollster not weighting by past vote or party identifier.

Looking at the detail Tory supporters remain much more likely to vote than Labour ones which has an impact on the overall numbers.

The survey began on Friday while all the news focus was on the EU summit and ended and Sunday when Gordon was crowned as leader and Harriet Harman won the deputy election.

In the days running up to the survey the story that was dominating the headlines was Brown’s offer of a cabinet place to Paddy Ashdown and it might have been that this has not produced the positive polling response that was hoped for.

My understanding is that the June ICM survey for the Guardian was carried out at the same time although, as I write, there is no sign on the paper’s website that it will be published in Tuesday’s edition. Maybe the paper is holding it over until tomorrow – the morning that Gordon goes to the the Palace.

We are also waiting for the June YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph which will probably be out on Friday.

On the general election date betting market the 2007 option has moved out from 7/1 to 11/1. Clearly Gordon is not going to risk it with numbers like these.

Mike Smithson