Lib Dems move into second place in new ICM poll?
WESTMINSTER:
CON 40(+1) LAB 22(-6) LD 25 (+5)
Desperate desperate figures for Brown as he faces June 4th
A sensational new ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph tonight has Labour down on 22% three points behind Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats who are at 25%.
This surely shows the affect that the MP expenses affair is having with Labour suffering much more than the other parties even though, during the fieldwork period, it was Tory miscreants who were dominating the headlines.
This is serious stuff for Brown as he faces what could be a disastrous Thursday with locals election in the English shire counties and, of course, the five yearly round of elections to the European parliament.
As I’ve argued here many times ICM has the most Lib Dem friendly methodology and the best record of all the firms in predicting the party’s eventual share from this far out. This is party down to its mathematics and party to its voting intention question which, uniquely, focuses on what will be going on in the respondents constituencies.
This, of course, comes after a high profile period for Nick Clegg and him being seen to have taken the lead over calling for Michael Martin to go.
There are Euro election numbers in the ICM poll which are markedly different to that which we saw from Populus last night.
EURO ELECTION:
CON 29 LAB 17 LD 20 UKIP 10 GRN 11 BNP 5
The marked differences are with UKIP and the Lib Dems. It’s hard coming up with an explanation until we have seen the detailed data.
My guess is that unlike Populus ICM did not prompt with the minor party names.