MORI shows Lib Dems up 8

Ipsos MORI's monthly political monitor also shows Labour down since "smeargate", but the overwhelming benificaries are the Liberal Democrats. The full topline figures with changes from last month are CON 41%(-1), LAB 28%(-4), LDEM 22%(+8)!

Any polls showing a party moving by 8 points deserves some degree of scepticism, though of course, the broad trend here - a further slump in labour support with people moving over to the Lib Dems is the same as in the Marketing Sciences poll, though obviously not to the same scale. In contrast it obviously doesn't tally with ICM's poll.

From a period when the polls were all very static and telling the same story, things are suddenly a lot more muddy. I've have a closer look at this poll later on when the tables appear.

UPDATE: The full results from MORI are now up on their website here, though the actual tables haven't surfaced yet. One very significant finding is a huge improvement in optimism on the economy, 35% of people now think the economy will get better in the next 12 months. 37% expect it to get worse, giving a net economic optimism figure of minus 2. In last month's MORI poll it was minus 29, so a huge leap. The public at least seem to be moving towards thinking the economy has bottomed out - though it remains to be seen how the budget will affect that view.