The Sunday Times at the weekend had a Panelbase poll of Scotland, their first since the general election. It doesn’t look like Westminster voting intention was asked, but they have figures for Holyrood constituency vote intention, I think the first figures we’ve had from anyone since way back in March (and the first from Panelbase since the Holyrood election in 2016). Topline figures there are SNP 42%(-5), CON 28%(+6), LAB 22%(-1), LDEM 6%(-2). These changes are from the 2016 election. The SNP continue to have a solid lead, but it’s no longer those 20 or 30 point leads we used to see back in 2016.

On Independence the topline figures were YES 40%(-1), NO 53%(nc), Don’t know 6%(nc). Changes are since June, and obviously don’t suggest any meaningful change. NO seem to have consolidated a double digit lead, not the sort of lead that couldn’t be overturned in a referendum campaign, but not the sort of lead I’d imagine would encourage Nicola Sturgeon to push for one too early.

On that question of timing for a referendum, 17% of peple would like a referendum in the immediate future, while Britain is negotiating to leave the EU, 26% would like a referendum after Britain has finishing negotiating to leave the EU, 58% don’t want one in the “next few years”. As I’ve written before, questions like this are very vulnerable to the timebands you offer, but when you add up the pro and anti answers they tend to fall in similar proportions to support for independence – those who’d like independence tend to favour a referendum on independence sometime soonish, those who don’t want independence anyway don’t particularly want a vote on it either. Full tabs for the Panelbase poll are here.

There is also a new YouGov poll of Wales, conducted for ITV and Cardiff University, and also the first since the general election. Westminster voting intention figures stand at CON 32%(-2), LAB 50%(+1), LDEM 4%(-1), Plaid 8%(-2), UKIP 3%(+1). Labour have strengthened their position marginally from what was already a very strong position.

Voting intentions for the Welsh Assembly are:
Constituency: CON 25%, LAB 43%, LDEM 5%, Plaid 19%, UKIP 4%
Regional: CON 23%, LAB 40%, LDEM 5%, Plaid 19%, UKIP 5%
According to Roger Scully if these figures were repeated at an actual Assembly election then on a uniform swing Labour would narrowly regain their majority with 31 Assembly seats.

We have two new GB polls today, plus YouGov polls for London & Wales.

Firstly, the weekly YouGov poll for the Times has topline figures of CON 42%(-1), LAB 39%(+3), LDEM 7%(-2), UKIP 4%(nc). Fieldwork was Tuesday and Wednesday and changes are from the YouGov/Sunday Times poll at the weekend. The trend continues to be towards Labour and, given YouGov tend to show the most favourable figures for Labour, that’s now heading into hung Parliament territory. Tabs are here. YouGov also have a new election model on their site here, providing a seat estimate – currently that is also showing a hung parliament, with the Conservatives on 317 seats.

Secondly we have this week’s Panelbase poll. Topline figures there are CON 44%(-4), LAB 36%(+3), LDEM 7%(nc), UKIP 5%(+1). Fieldwork was conducted between Friday and today, and changes are from their poll conducted at the start of last week. A sharp narrowing of the Tory lead here, and Panelbase now weight their voting intention figures to the age profile of 2015 voters, not the whole adult population, so they are using a method that we’d expect to show a big Tory lead. When they changed their method last week it increased the Tory lead by seven points, so without the change they’d presumably have been showing a very close race indeed.

YouGov’s London poll for Phil Cowley at Queen Mary University London has topline figures of CON 33%, LAB 50%, LDEM 11%, UKIP 3%. In 2015 Labour had a nine point lead in London, so this would reflect a swing of four points from Conservative to Labour, and would likely produce several Labour gains. That’s better for Labour than even the most favourable GB polls, but isn’t necessarily unfeasible. Given the different demographics in the capital the swing in London is increasingly divorced from the rest of Britain – there was also a sizable shift towards towards Labour in London in 2015, despite there being relatively little movement in England as a whole. It is also younger than the rest of England, and more anti-Brexit than the rest of England. Tabs are here. (For what it’s worth, there are actually two YouGov/QMUL London polls today – there was a YouGov London poll coming out of field at the time of the Manchester bombing, which given the timing was held back to release both together today. Not that there has been any real movement between them… the Conservatives are down one compared to last week. That does, at least mean we can be confident that the big shift towards Labour in London happened around the time of the manifestos, rather than in the last week).

Just out, there is also new YouGov poll of Wales, which has topline figures of CON 35%(+1), LAB 46%(+2), LDEM 5%(-1), Plaid 8%(-1), UKIP 5%(nc). I’ll update with Roger Scully’s commentary and the tables when they appear.

Finally, I have a longer piece over on the YouGov website about the differences between the polls, implied turnout figures, what is likely to happen at the election.

There have been two new voting intention polls today from Panelbase and Kantar.

Kantar has topline figures of CON 47%(+3),LAB 29%(+1), LDEM 8%(-3), UKIP 6%(-2). (tabs)
Panelbase have topline figures of CON 47%(-1), LAB 33%(+2), LDEM 7%(-1), UKIP 5%(nc) (tabs)

Once again, the broad picture appears to be a hefty Tory lead, Labour creeping upwards (Kantar still have Labour in the twenties – like ICM and ComRes they have a turnout model that is based partially on demographics, in the case of Kantar they base part of their turnout model on respondent’s ages and the historical pattern of turnout by age), UKIP and the Liberal Democrats being squeezed.

The 33% that Labour have in the Panelbase poll is the highest the party have scored in the campaign so far. Along with yesterday’s polls this has provoked some comment – how can Labour be polling at about the same as 2015 given their division, Corbyn’s poor ratings and so on? Part of this seems to be that substantial numbers of voters who don’t like Jeremy Corbyn do seem to be holding their noses and voting for Labour anyway. For example, 17% of current Labour voters would like the Conservative party to win the election. Presumably they are Labour supporters who don’t want a Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn, but are voting for the party – perhaps through party loyalty, support for their local candidate, to ensure an viable opposition, or to give Labour a bigger base to recover from. That combination of holding onto some unhappy Labour voters who don’t like Corbyn and gaining some new voters from the Greens and non-voters mean the Labour vote may not be collapsing in the way some expected.

Of course, it may also be that the publicity of the manifesto leak and launch is giving Labour a temporary boost, that the Conservatives and the hostile media have not yet turned their full cannons upon Jeremy Corbyn, or that the polls haven’t done enough to address over-estimates of Labour support. We shall see.