And LAB drops 4% when Ed Miliband is named as leader?

The Liberal Democrats would significantly improve their prospects at the next general election if Vince Cable replaced Nick Clegg as leader, according to both ComRes phone survey for tomorrow’s Independent and YouGov for the Sun.

ComRes asked three VI question:-

When the standard voting question was asked 12% said Lib Dem

When Clegg was named as leader this rose to 14%.

But when the named LD leader was Vince Cable it moved up to 18%.

When people were asked who they would vote for if Clegg remained the Lib Dems leader, the party would achieve a 14 per cent share of the vote. Asked how they would vote if the Business Secretary Vince Cable were party leader, the Lib Dems would achieve an 18 per cent share of the vote.

On current constituency boundaries, that would see the Lib Dems, who currently have 57 MPs, win 39 seats at the next election under Mr Cable and 23 under Mr Clegg.

	Current Voting Intention (VI) – asked naming political party only (1)	VI – asked naming  current leader of the political party (2)	VI – asked naming current leaders for Con / Lab, and Vince Cable for Lib Dems (3)
Conservative	35%	35%	34%
Labour	42%	39%	38%
Lib Dem	12%	14%	18%
Other	11%	12%	10%

As well as the Cable impact there’s some potentially really bad news for EdM here. The poll seems to suggest that naming him in the voting question reduces support for Labour by 3-4%.

The only detail on the YouGov poll is that LD support goes up a third with Cable as leader.

The critical thing with this polling is not whether it is accurate – but the impact it has on the party in the run-up to the Brighton conference in less than three weeks.

Mike Smithson @MSmithsonPB