UPDATED

Were spread punters premature in switching to the Tories?

After reporting that the spread markets had moved sharply back to the Tories I have now picked up on the YouGov poll in the Daily Mirror which shows a narrowing of the Tory lead to 8% – although Cameron’s party share is still comfortably in the 40s.

In the panel above I reproduce a seat projection from the UK Polling Report calculator which suggests that what appeared a certainty until a few weeks ago – a Tory majority – is now very much in the melting pot.

What’s very odd about the survey is that the pollster, YouGov, also carry out work for BPIX which yesterday reported a lead twice as large. Generally the two pollsters report figures in broadly the same range. Alas we have not seen the details of either poll yet and we do not know the fieldwork dates for the Mirror survey.

[UPDATE 1230: The Mirror poll was an old poll. It’s now clear that the fieldwork by YouGov took place from Wednesday to Friday – so was a day earlier than BPIX. Given that most of the responses come in within the first couple of days then it would have been affected very little by the Cameron speech on Friday. The latter would have had a much greater impact on BPIX. The Tories always poll much better when their leader is in the headlines.]

This is clearly great news for Labour and they are only two points adrift from their general election share in 2005.

So things are in a state of flux and maybe the spread markets will move back down again.

Mike Smithson