By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982
Labour has taken a minor hit in the first post Hoon-Hewitt poll, slipping by a point as the Tories rose by two compared with another poll conducted by the same group earlier in the week.
It's not too drastic in the circumstances but the YouGov poll shows the Tories rising to 42%, Labour down to 30% and the Lib Dems on 16%. Any bounce from the Tories' weak start to the campaign, however, has certainly been lost - and it may be too soon to judge the full damage of this week's news.
Transferred broadly to a general election using the UK Polling Report Swing Calculator, these numbers would give the Tories a majority of 62, with 356 seats to Labour's 235.
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Don't say it too loud.. The people who think things will get better read this thread. They must be left believing in "Tory cuts versus Labour investment".
Don't tell them..
I'd say your headline is more "sleight" than "slight".
To me this shows that Clegg and the Lib Dems are failing to ignite any passion in voters and that it is in THIS area that Labour can gain enough votes to enter hung Parliament territory.
So this says to me that the Lib Dems should be Labour's main target in the coming campaign, not the Tories.
3% this week and 3% next week I think.
Thanks to quick action by activists like yourself and Ralph, I think this storm has been kept to tea cup proportions, and my guess is that it will have little influence on the overall trends...
Er... Which aren't that good. But now we're in election mode, you'd expect the gap to narrow. My hunch is that the Tories will be polling around a 7 per cent lead (bar some major calamity or happenstance) come May/June and election day.
Not enough to secure them a healthy majority. And that will be vital to the post Brown era and our chances of renewing ourselves.
There's still everything to play for, and from everything I've heard and read from Ralph, I sincerely hope for his constituents sake, he trounces all the opposition, and becomes the next serving MP.
Not sure activists can affect a poll survey result!
Scary thought
(If you believe in uniform swing, which I don't but it's the only readily available predictions from UKPR & the like) ..... This may only be a 3% swing but it translates to going from a conservative majority of -5 (just about parliament territory) to a majority of 62. A couple more per cent swing and we're back into Tory landslide territory. That's a lot of hard work undone in a "moment of madness".
It could get bad. On the other hand it could have little impact...
At this moment, all our prognostications ought to be written on toilet paper. That way, they won't be entirely useless.
I would love to see us begin to advance now, we should start talking up the economy now and GB must start advertising as much futurestuff as possible!