Is there anything that Brown can do to turn things round?

The May ICM national voting intention survey for the Guardian is just out and records what is the firm’s biggest Labour deficit of modern times – and is in line with the trend of other recent polls.

The figures, with changes on the last ICM poll at the end of April are: CON 41% (+2): LAB (-2): LD 22% (+2). The changes reflected in the chart above are from the last Guardian survey – my changes here are from the most recent poll by the firm.

Just to emphasise that these are NATIONAL voting intention figures and should not be confused with the weekend survey by the same pollster in Crewe and Nantwich.

Overall a consistent picture is coming from a range of pollsters showing that Gordon Brown’s Labour party is in very serious trouble. The Tories are well above 40% and Labour is in the mid to high 20s. Clearly there has been a step change and the £2.7bn worth of tax cuts announced last week don’t seem to have had any affect whatsoever.

These latest numbers set Thursday by election in context and add support to the specific polling in the constituency.

Everything now dpeends, in my view, on the size of the Tory margin on Thursday. If it’s getting on for double figures then Gordon will be in very dangerous territory indeed.

Methodology note: It seems that the methodological changes used for the Crewe and Nantwich polls have also been applied here. According to the paper the effect is to increase the Tory margin by about 1%.

Mike Smithson