Poll List: ICM puts Labour within 9 points of Tories

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

Another new poll for today’s Guardian shows the Tories slipping two points and Labour gaining two – and has the Tory lead now down to 9 points. The Lib Dems are down a point on 18%.

It’s the first Guardian/ICM poll since December 2009 – and the first carried out by ICM for any newspaper since that time – to give the Tories less than a double digit lead.

Surveys conducted by other groups in recent weeks have also shown similar figures, with only the weekend’s ComRes poll showing a real blip in that general direction. Populus, YouGov and ICM all now have the gap at between 8 and 10% – with a 3-5 point margin of error.

Translated to a general election, these numbers would deliver a hung parliament, with the Tories falling 6 seats short of a working majority on 320 seats to Labour’s 260, according to UK Polling Report’s Swing Calculator. They are likely to further fuel speculation about an early election – which I still think would be wrong – and a possible hung parliament.

The survey also shows new doubt surrounds the Tories’ ability to lead the economy: two months ago, 49% of voters said they thought Cameron and Osborne would manage the economy better than Goron Brown and Alistair Darling; that figure is down sharply to 38% today.