The Damage of the Smear Emails

In a poll for the Mail on Sunday Sunday Telegraph by Marketing Sciences Ltd, labour have slipped by 4 points to 29%. This would appear to be as a result of the row over smear emails sent from Downing street. Interestingly. the Tories have not moved up or down and stay on 43% and the Lib Dems are up by 3 points. If this was equated to a general election result there would be a Conservative majority of 62 (about the same as the current Labour majority).

Clearly what has happened over the last week is that some people have turned against Labour but haven’t turned towards the Tories. A lead of 17 is encouraging at this point, however there is still much to be done to ensure a Conservative victory as we all know how polls can be wrong…

For the details of the latest poll, please look at the polls feature to the right of this post under my Twitter updates

UPDATE: An ICM Poll published this evening (20th April) shows a -4 drop for the Tories and only a -1 drop for labour. This is compared with the previous ICM poll at the end of March which had the Tories on a 13 point lead. This is a bit worrying for the Tories if one of the worst weeks for Labour in recent times had had little effect, or that the Tories have been unable to capitalise on such events.

There is a MORI poll due out tomorrow which I expect to show a slight increase for the Tories and a slight decrease for Labour but no big changes.

Incidentally, in case anyone was wondering where I get the data for the images below my Twitter updates, they come from UK polling Report. they calculate the averages of the recent polls which is explained on their blog.