Survey	Date	CON %	LAB %	LD %
ComRes/Independent	01/10/10	39	36	15
ComRes/IOS-S Mirror	17/09/10	37	35	15
ComRes/Independent	05/09/10	38	34	18
ComRes/Mirror/GMTV	15/08/10	39	33	15
ComRes/Independent	08/08/10	39	33	16
ComRes/Independent	27/06/10	40	31	18
ComRes/Independent on Sunday	17/06/10	36	30	23
ComRes/Independent	31/05/10	37	33	21
ComRes/IOS-S Mirror	13/05/10	38	34	21

Blow for Labour in new phone poll

There’s a new phone poll from ComRes out in the Independent where the fieldwork finished yesterday evening – two days after the survey for the Guardian by ICM which reported a two point Labour lead.

This is the first phone poll to be completed after all the saga of David Miliband – his reaction to his brother’s speech and his later announcement that he was standing aside.

There’s little doubt that there’ll be disappointment in the red camp particularly as it comes after a party conference which has dominated the bulletins and many of the front pages. They might have been expecting better.

The poll finds that voters are divided over the new leader with 27% saying he was a good choice against against 26% who disagreed. A big challenge, of course, is that he’s still an unknown quantity with 47% saying they didn’t know.

Amongst Labour supporters, only 50% regarded him as a good choice and by 29% to 17% those interviewed thought his brother would have been better.

This is all early days and clearly there is relatively little awareness of of Ed Miliband out there. That will, of course, change with time.

Conference season polling: As I always stress at this time of year polls taken during the conference should be treated with some care because of the heavy media coverage. It’s the end of October polls that should start to give a proper picture of where we are.

Mike Smithson