The Tory YouGov lead drops to 20%
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But more ammunition for those who want Gord out
The News of the World has a poll from YouGov, giving David Cameron’s Conservatives yet another healthy over Gordon Brown’s Labour government – 20 percentage points although it is down a couple of notches from the last survey from the firm nine days ago.
Amongst the non-voting intention questions nearly half of those who took part said Brown should quit and and 49% say they would prefer Tony Blair as PM.
Ben Glanville, of YouGov, said: “These results are bad news for Gordon Brown. If Labour are to have any hope of wooing the electorate then a change at the top may restore their fortunes, but it is no magic bullet. And if Labour chose a new leader he or she would have to work very hard to gain the public’s confidence. It would not come automatically.â€
As is usual YouGov break down their polling data by the newspapers they read and for the first time that I can recall the commissioning paper has included in its report the findings from their segment of the sample. One figure being highlighted is that 32% of readers said they would be more likely to vote Labour with Brown gone.
Just focusing on this segment is quite meaningless in electoral terms though I understand why the News of the World has done it.
The main conclusion from the poll is that we have got a little bit closer to the general election and still there is no major change in Labour’s position. The time is ticking by and Labour is still facing disaster.
Mike Smithson
This was Morus’s earlier report on the site on the poll:
Whilst voting intention figures are not included in the article, there is an indication of how hard/soft Conservative and Liberal Democrat support is, with respect to how Labour might possibly recover under a new Leader.
25% of Lib Dem voters, and 20% of Tory voters say that they would consider voting Labour if Brown was replaced.
More news when we have it.
Morus
UPDATE: I’ve just checked on UK Polling Report and the last NotW opinion poll conducted was back on the 14th March of this year (they only normally conduct one poll with voting intention scores each year, but this is the third in the last 12 months). The percentages back in March were (C-40, Lab-31, LD-20). I also notice that their previous surveys have been conducted by ICM, so this is something of a new combination, which may be worth noting if we are to compare it to previous polls.
UPDATE II: I’ve just spoken to the News of the World and the party scores are Conservative 46%, Labour 26%, Lib Dem 17%, Other 11%.
Comapared to the last YouGov poll in the Telegraph (31st July 2008), this is a change of Conservative (-1), Labour (+1), Lib Dem (+1), with the Tory lead cut from 22-points down to 20-points. However, this was in a different paper, and as YouGov are having their servers fixed tonight, I don’t expect more broken-down details until Monday.