What will ICM be saying tonight?

As site regulars will know I have theory, based on nearly three years of records, that the single most important driver in the CON-LAB poll numbers is the amount of media coverage that Cameron gets. If he’s been making the headlines or leading the bulletins then his party’s ratings go up – if he’s been blanked out of the news agenda then there will be a decline.

This is about the quantity of coverage not the quality.

So if I am right a big factor behind the recent moves back to Labour has been that the economic crisis has been so overwhelming that the Tory leader has found it hard getting a look in. He even missed his weekly opportunity last Wednesday when at the last minute Brown decided to go AWOL from PMQs – a move that I feel we have not heard the last of.

Which brings us to last Friday and Cameron’s big speech in the city. It got a mountain of coverage which last a couple of days – just enough to coincide with three major polls which were being carried out over the weekend. These were the Guardian October survey by ICM, the month’s political monitor by Ipsos-MORI and a poll of marginals by YouGov.

I am expecting the first of these – ICM’s – this evening. The last ICM poll, carried out during the conference season, had C42%-L30%-LD17%.

Watch this space.

Mike Smithson