Pollwatch Day 5 #GE2010 – Lib Dems at 20%, Lab 30%, Tories 39%

By Stephen Tall | Sun 11th April 2010 - 12:00 pm

Three new polls today:

(There is also a poll in the Mail on Sunday – but, as it’s by the dubious BPIX, we’re not giving it house-room here on LDV).

There is for the first time in this campaign a small shift in Anthony Wells’ UK Polling Report ‘poll of polls’, with the Tories nudging up 1%, and Lib Dems and Labour unchanged:

Con 39% (+1%), Lab 30% (n/c), Lib Dem 20% (n/c)

There is one other poll, one which contains relatively bad news for the Tories, relatively good news for the Lib Dems – ICM’s poll of 96 Labour-held marginals where the Conservatives need a swing of between 4% and 10% to win. The headline figures are (compared with January): CON 36%(-4), LAB 37%(nc), LIB DEM 19%(+5). Anthony tells us, “This equates to a swing of 6.3%, so slightly less than the 6.9% the Conservatives require in marginal seats.”

This would appear to show what has long been acknowledged: that the Lib Dems tend to benefit most from the oxygen of publicity of an election campaign, when the broadcast media is forced by law to do the proper political reporting job it should do all year round.

There is a range of other polling findings: the FT’s Alex Barker has a lucky dip round-up here, covering the Tories’ NI and marriage tax-cuts, hung parliament prospects, favoured Chancellor and leaders’ debate expectations.

2 Comments

tonyhill 11th Apr '10 - 12:07pm

I’m not sure how one poll unchanged, one showing us down 2% and one showing us down 4% can be spun as three polls all showing positive news for the LibDems.
Stephen Tall 11th Apr '10 - 12:57pm

quite right, Tony – I copied ‘n’ pasted yesterday’s post as a template, but forgot to amend the opening line.