The end of the week, and a couple of polls that have come out over the last few days.

• Firstly Ipsos MORI have released their quarterly monitor on Scottish public opinion. Holyrood constituency voting intention stands at CON 16%(+3), LAB 36%(+1), LDEM 8%(+1), SNP 39%(-4). Voting intention in the referendum on Scottish Independence stands at YES 31%(-3), NO 59%(+4). Full tabs are here, and there is some commentary from Bob Worcester here
• On the subject of Scottish polls, Lord Ashcroft has done some polling on attitudes to nuclear weapons in Scotland here. His polling has voting intentions in the Independence referendum at YES 30%, NO 56%, similar to the MORI poll – Ashcroft’s commentary on the nuclear weapon results is here.
• Populus have been doing a weekly poll asking people – unprompted – what news stories they have noticed in the last week. I love questions like this, not for when they show a story has been noticed (for example, the budget is noticed by a very high proportion of people, hence why it changes votes so much) but for the way it sometimes underlines how little impact a story has on normal people. Hence this week 33% of people mentioned the Ohio kidnaps, 9% Alex Ferguson’s retirement, just 3% the Queen’s speech.
• There is a big chunk of analysis here from Peter Kellner for Progress magazine, looking at the challenge facing Labour and including new polling on how people see Labour and the Conservative party.
• And finally, this morning’s YouGov poll for the Sun has topline voting intention figures of CON 30%, LAB 39%, LDEM 10%, UKIP 14%. Full tabs here. For people who are interested in that sort of thing, there are also some questions about Alex Ferguson here.

Yesterday we had two polls conducted partially after the referendum announcement, from YouGov and TNS, neither of which showed any boost for the Conservatives. Today’s YouGov is the first conducted entirely after the referendum announcement and has topline figures of CON 33%, LAB 43%, LDEM 10%, UKIP 9% – so no obvious impact at all.

Personally speaking this is a slight surprise, while Europe is not an issue that particularly excites voters (even UKIP voters are actually driven more by things like immigration and the economy),  I thought a temporary boost from Cameron looking on top of things and the exceptionally good press coverage of the last few days was likely. In the event Cameron’s own ratings have indeed improved – YouGov repeated their leader attributes question yesterday and Cameron got his best ratings since last April,  with particular increases in strength and being good in a crisis. However these don’t appear to have translated into voting intention. Normal caveats apply, it is just one poll and others may paint a different picture, but so far the big gamechanging speech doesn’t appear to have changed public opinion much.

YouGov’s poll also asked voting intention in a referendum – the figures remain extremely close, 40% would vote to leave, 38% would vote to stay, confirming again the drastic narrowing in the lead of those wanting to leave since last year. Populus also had a poll out this morning in today’s Times which found almost identical figures – 40% saying leave, 37% saying stay.

Lord Ashcroft has commissioned a second poll in Corby (not Corby and East Northamptonshire – it might be the name of the Conservative association, but the seat is just called Corby). The topline figures are CON 32% (down 10 from the general election), LAB 54% (up 15), LDEM 5% (down 10%), UKIP 6%, Green 1%, BNP 1%.

The 22 point lead equates to a thirteen point swing towards Labour, a very strong performance indeed. Lord Ashcroft last polled the constituency back in August when they found a 15 point lead – more in line with the sort of swing we are seeing nationally. Given the national polls haven’t moved the difference between then and now seems to be campaigning – the Labour party are clearly putting up the strongest campaign on the ground: 33% of people reported having been canvassed by Labour, compared to only 11% by the Conservatives; 59% had received Labour leaflets, compared to only 42% Conservative ones; 14% had been phoned by Labour compared to only 6% by the Tories and so on.

Meanwhile last night’s YouGov poll for the Sun had topline figures of CON 32%, LAB 45%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 8%