But are the marginals behaving differently?

The Daily Telegraph YouGov poll for October is out this morning and shows almost no change on the last survey from the pollster a fortnight ago and is producing numbers fairly in line with other pollsters.

The Tories will be relieved that the paper’s still has them comfortably in the 40s while Labour is only polling three points down on its general election level.

There’s little doubt that the last month and a half has seen a step change in public opinion and what we are getting is a “new normality” where there has been enough of a Labour recovery to suggest, on a uniform swing, only a bare Cameron majority.

But Brown’s party really needs to see the Tory share slip below 40% from a range of pollsters to have a realistic chance of the outcome being a hung parliament.

Feeding in the latest poll into the UKPollingReport seat calculator and we get CON 333: LAB 265: LD 24: OTH 28 seats. This almost certainly underplays the Lib Dem position but gives a broad view of where we are – a small Conservative majority.

What is interesting is that between the last national YouGov survey a fortnight ago and this one there has been the Channel 4 YouGov poll of the marginals which pointed to an overall Tory majority of 54 seats. This seems to indicate the things are working differently in the key seats where the election will be decided and where the parties are putting most of their campaigning effort.

Coming on top of the ComRes poll on Tuesday I would expect a tightening of the position between the parties on the spread betting markets. The current levels from PB’s spreadbetting sponsor, SportingIndex are now CON 338-344: LAB 238-244: LD 43-46 seats – down a couple of notches overnight and showing an eight seat Tory drop during October.

I am currently a Tory seller and will stay that way.

Mike Smithson