Results of a “quickie” Populus poll of 586 people on yesterday’s budget are just out on the Times website and shows broad public backing for the measures on drinking and motoring.

The survey did not include a voting intention question and was almost certainly not past vote weighted. This is likely to have produced a smallish but significant nevertheless pro-Labour sample.

This factor is important when judging findings like the one that “most voters do not think the Budget would have been better if the Conservatives were in Government now.” A past voted weighted survey with a politically balanced sample would have probably given a different result.

One message that the government seem to have got through is the global nature of the economic challenges that it is facing. Peter Ridell reports: “Two-thirds (66 per cent) think that “Britain’s economic position and prospects are affected much more by the conditions of the global economy than by anything that the Chancellor of the Exchequer does”.

There should be full voting intention polls out in the next couple of days. One of the respondents to an ICM poll was Lib Dem staffer Mark Pack who blogged the experience as he was being questioned.

Mike Smithson