But how much is down to not weighting by likelihood to vote?

A new YouGov poll for tomorrow’s Sunday Times has Labour 10% ahead and the vote shares back at 2001 general election levels.

These are the shares compared with the last YouGov poll at the end of July – CON 32% (nc): LAB 42%(+1): LD 14% (-2)

So the big change has been a drop in the Lib Dem share to 14% – a level they were at in June. This is the second worst position for the party since the general election.

The element that I find odd about YouGov’s methodology is that it is the only pollster that does not weight its figures the the likelihood to vote. With the other firms this adjustment has a huge affect sometimes reducing the LAB-CON gap by 4-5%.

Thus the last YouGov poll had a 9% margin which was followed by 6% from ICM and 3% by Communicate Research.

Whatever this poll is very good news for Labour and very bad for the Tories and the Lib Dems.

Mike Smithson