But there’s better news for Dave on “preferred PM”

There’s a new Populus telephone poll out for tomorrow’s Times which has CON 33%(nc): LAB 41%(nc): LD 9%(-1): UKIP 5%

So the Labour’s lead stays constant and the tendency for phone polls to find much smaller shares for UKIP continues.

On leader ratings 24% said they were “satisfied” with Cameron as PM. 32% said they were “dissatisfied… but would still prefer Dave to Ed Miliband”, while 31 per cent said they would prefer Mr Miliband.

So some good news for the blues though I want to see the precise findings in the data-set to make sure that I’ve understood the question. The way that it is reported in the paper the question format does sound a tad leading.

According to UKPR the poll also covered asking who/what was tp blame for the current state of the economy. Respondents were asked to rate blame on a scale of 0 to 10, Populus counted those who blamed each item by 8/10 or more. This meant the interviewees were allowed to attribute blame to more than one item.

64% blamed the banks’ behaviour prior, 57% blamed the Eurozone crisis, 49% the last Labour government’s borrowing, 47% blamed banks for not lending now and 37% blamed the current government’s cuts.

The much smaller proportion blaming the coalition government is good news for the Tories and Lib Dems.

Mike Smithson @MSmithsonPB