Poll List: Labour six points off Tories

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

UPDATE: A new ComRes poll also shows the Tory lead down three points to 8.

UPDATE: Tim Montgomerie at ConservativeHome says, simply, “hmm”.

In a new YouGov poll for tomorrow’s Sunday Times, Labour has increased by two points to 33%, while the Tories have slipped one point to 39%. The Lib Dems are down one point to 17%.

The gap between Labour and the Tories is now down to 6 points, the closest they have been since LabourList started tracking the major polls during conference season last year — and the Tories’ narrowest lead for 14 months in any YouGov poll.

Translated broadly to a general election, these polling figures would deliver a hung parliament, with the Tories 31 seats short of a working majority on 295 seats, and Labour 5 seats behind on 290, according to the UK Polling Report’s Swing Calculator.

In the other results from the poll, about the same percentage of people do not trust David Cameron and George Osborne on the economy (63%) as the government (64%). Most people (51%) expect the economy to slip back into recession this year.

While Gordon Brown’s personal rating is still negative at “-21”, that figure has improved greatly since last June, when it was at “-50”. Meanwhile, 64% of people said it’s right for politicians to show emotion more frequently, as Gordon Brown did last weekend, and only 14% said such performances make politicians look “weak”.

In the case of a hung parliament, 34% of Lib Dems would prefer the Party joined forces with Labour than with the Tories (22%).