Posted by Chris Gilson.

Latest Poll Information for 23 April

The big news today is obviously last night’s Leader’s Debate on international affairs (see just below). However, the most recent opinion polls summarized in our measure (and in Sky’s average) only take into account public opinion up to yesterday afternoon, and so they cannot yet register any movements caused by the second debate’s outcomes and its poll implications. Still, we can see that the Liberal Democrat surge showed little sign of abating up to yesterday, with them holding steady on 31 per cent in our measure. (Sky’s average showed a Lib Dem rise from 28 to 30 per cent since Wednesday, but primarily because of a new MORI poll replacing a very out-of-date one). The Conservatives have slightly strengthened to 33 per cent, while Labour stay on 26 per cent in our measure, as they have done since the beginning of this week. Many commentators seem to believe that the Tories are recovering better from the Lib Dem surge than Labour, but we will have to wait for the post-debate polls to see if there are any clear trends.

Individual polls continue to show some scatter on party support levels. ComRes (using a potentially problematic ‘rolling poll’ method) has Cameron’s party on 35 per cent, and Labour down to 25 per cent. AngusReid have recently put the Conservatives on 32 per cent, Labour on 23 per cent, and the Liberal Democrats on 33 per cent: but, as we’ve noted in the past, this polling company is frequently out of sync with most other polls, and seems to chronically give the lowest possible Labour rating. By contrast, YouGov in the past day has put Labour as high as 29 per cent and the Conservatives on 34 per cent, in sight of their pre-debates figures of 36-37 per cent. In that poll, the Liberal Democrats actually trail the top two parties on 28 per cent, while it is the Other parties’ votes that are squeezed down. Another YouGov poll only two days earlier, put Labour on 26 per cent, the Tories on 31 per cent, and the Lib Dems on 34 per cent.

Turning next to the second debate, in our experts view, Gordon Brown and David Cameron gave improved performances in the second debate, and targeted Nick Clegg much more closely than first time around. Individual polls on who won are still more ‘unsettled’ than they were prior to the first debate, indicating that there are a number of floating voters who are shifting between the parties.

Who won the International Affairs Debate? Polling 23 April

Once again Clegg clearly did well, but this time two polls saw him as just pipped by David Cameron. This is nonetheless a big change from the first debate, where 40-60 per cent of respondents in different polls then saw him as the winner. Essentially this is because the three leaders split the laurels pretty evenly between them, with Gordon Brown doing much better also this week. Three in every ten respondents saw the PM as winning the debate in three of our polls, compared with the first debate where in four out of the five polls only a fifth or fewer respondents saw him as the winner.