The polls have been largely static for the last three months, showing Conservative leads between 13 and 24 points. Written like that, it doesn’t sound so static does it? Say the position was closer between the main parties, no one would describe a situation where polls were showing results varying between a 6 point Labour lead and a 4 point Tory lead as consistent. The reality though is that they are. My first sentence did ...

Tucked away in the Observer there is also news of a YouGov poll for Compass which shows broad support for a one off windfall tax on “oil companies recent profits”. 67% supported a windfall tax, 13% opposed it. Full tables for the poll are here and also include a voting intention question. Topline figures, with changes from the last YouGov poll, are CON 48%(+3), LAB 26%(+1), LDEM 16%(-2).

Both ICM and YouGov asked people about Brown and Miliband in their recent polls. In YouGov’s poll 21% of people thought Miliband would be a better Prime Minister than Brown (unfortunately YouGov didn’t give the alternative of him being worse than Brown - only of not being better). 11% of people told YouGov they would be more likely to vote Labour with Miliband as leader, 9% less likely. ICM asked people to pick the best ...

No sooner do I go on holiday for a week than we get three polls in a row. ICM/Guardian (15-17th August): CON 44%(-1) LAB 29%(nc) LDEM 19%(+3) YouGov/Sunday Times (14-15th August): CON 45%(-1) LAB 25%(-1) LDEM 18%(+1) Ipsos MORI (15-17th August): CON 48%(+1) LAB 24%(-3) LDEM 17%(+2) Polls in August are normally treated with slight scepticism because it’s the holiday season - at any point a certain proportion of people are likely to be away ...

A new YouGov poll for the News of the World has topline voting intention questions of CON 46%(-1), LAB 26%(+1), LDEM 17%(+1). The poll was conducted between the 6th and 8th of August. I do tend to be slightly wary of August polls - most pollsters do weight samples by the number of foreign holidays respondents take to even out the bias of people being on holiday in August, but all the same. In this ...

CrosbyTextor have sent be the tables for the marginal poll in the Sunday Telegraph. The actual voting intention figures, with don’t knows and won’t votes excluded, is CON 49%, LAB 20%, LDEM 21%, Others 10% - representing a swing of 10.9% from the last general election. It was carried out between the 16th and 29th June, when the national polls were showing Tory leads between 18 and 23 points, equating to swings between 10.5% and ...

ComRes’s monthly poll for the Independent has topline voting intentions - with changes from their last poll - of CON 46%(+1), LAB 24%(nc), LDEM 18%(+2). The bigger picture of a Tory lead around 20 points is still unchanged, though for the record this is the largest Tory lead ComRes have ever recorded. The poll was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, so before the Glasgow East by-election result and the atrocious media coverage Labour have received ...

Mike Smithson has managed to get hold of the tables for the Progressive Scottish Opinion poll in Glasgow East. Looking at the tables, Progressive Scottish Opinion do not appear to have used any political weighting when weighting their sample. Politically their raw sample appears to have been pretty much the same as ICM’s, whose weighting had the effective of weighting the SNP sharply downwards and the Liberal Democrats very strongly upwards. As a result, the ...

ICM’s monthly poll for the Guardian has topline voting intention figures, with changes from their last poll, of CON 43%(-2), LAB 28%(+3), LDEM 19%(-1). The poll was conducted between the 18th and 20th July. We’re getting some contradictory messages from the polls this month. Populus and ICM are both showing Labour recovering from their nadir, YouGov and ComRes show things pretty much as they were. Of course, it’s easy to exaggerate the differences - the ...

ComRes have a new poll in the Independent on Sunday. The topline voting intention with changes from the last ComRes poll are CON 45%(-1), LAB 24%(-1), LDEM 16%(-2) (the drop in support for the main parties, interestingly enough, seems to have benefited the Green party, up on 5%, hich will be interesting if it is reflected in any other polls). The poll was conducted between the 16th and 17th July. The Tory lead is steady ...

Last weekend the Sunday Telegraph published an ICM poll conducted in Glasgow East showing Labour ahead by 14 points. It’s a good lead, but a lot of people seem unconvinced by the poll. Let’s look at the reasons. Firstly, the weighting of the poll. Some people have flagged up that on the unweighted figures Labour are only 4 points ahead of the SNP. This is irrelevant - the unweighted figures are skewed, even before we ...

The monthly YouGov poll for the Sunday Times has topline voting intention figures, with changes from YouGov’s last poll, of CON 47%(+1), LAB 25%(-3), LDEM 18%(+3). The poll was conducted on the 10th and 11th July. It looks like a drop for Labour, but the comparisons above are from YouGov’s last Telegraph poll, which itself showed an increase for Labour and drop for the Lib Dems. These figures are identical to the YouGov poll before ...

A new YouGov poll of Scottish opinion for the Telegraph has, for what is apparently (according to the SNP and the Telegraph) the first time, the sNP ahead of Labour in Westminster voting intentions. The topline voting intention figures are CON 20%, LAB 29%, LDEM 14%, SNP 33%. We are used to seeing voting intention polls for the Scottish Parliament showing the SNP ahead of Labour, but the SNP tend to do better in Holyrood ...

Iain Dale, and others who oppose 42 day detention are greeting with great joy a new ICM poll for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust that suggests 60% of people think the limit on the length of time terrorist suspects can be held should be less than 42 days. I’m afraid I have to rain on their parade. Firstly, some bloggers are interpreting this poll as showing that that David Davis’s campaign has swung public opinion ...