New Populus online poll has LAB lead up to 8 CON 31%(nc) LAB 39%(+1) LD 12%(-1) UKIP 10%(nc) Changes are on Monday's poll

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 19, 2013

In the red camp the most important objective is retaining 2010 LDs

A couple of months ago I had an interesting dialogue with one of Labour top strategists who set out the four battlegrounds which they thought would decide GE2015.

Surprisingly the least important to him was the fight with the Tories. The second didn’t involve Labour at all but was the CON-UKIP battle and the extent to which the blue vote would seep to the purples.

The third was the Labour’s fight with the LDs in seats where they were second last time

The big objective was attracting and retaining 2010 LDs voters in the marginals. There are a lot of them – one in four voters opted for Clegg’s party last time.

If the data from today’s Populus poll is anything to go by Labour is succeeding – see chart.

You should note that unlike many vote breaks-downs for the above from today’s Populus poll I have taken the shares BEFORE the totals were netted off to exclude the don’t knows and won’t says.

Lynton Crosby needs a strategy to detach the ex-yellows from the reds and so far there’s little to suggest that he has one.

All the fieldwork for this latest poll was carried out while the headlines were dominated by the attacks on Labour’s custodianship of the NHS

Amongst other polling snippets today was this from YouGov.

UKIP voters are the least likely to know who Lynton Crosby is See YouGov data pic.twitter.com/GPQJaNj5nv

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 19, 2013

Mike Smithson