On the pro side…

1) The economy is likely to get worse. The CBI’s predictions last week had the recession continuing through 2009 and reaching its nadir in early 2010 with unemployment at around 3 million. In other words, if Brown waits until the last moment for an election he will be fighting it at the very worst moment economically, when the public’s spirits have been sapped by economic hardship, they are likely blaming him for lost jobs, lower incomes and repossessed houses and yet, there aren’t quite any tangible signs of recovery.
2) The polls are close enough to stand a chance. On the new electoral boundaries the Conservatives need a lead of somewhere around 10 points for a majority (it depends on how well the Lib Dems do) and Labour can be the biggest party in a hung Parliment even if they are a couple of points behind. So while the polls are still all showing the Conservatives ahead, we are for the first time in months in a position where Labour would have at least a chance of coming out of an election with the most seats.
3) Waiting till the last minute leaves no room for maneouvre. If Gordon Brown waits until the very last minute in 2010 it does leave him with no room for maneouvre at all. Think back to Tony Blair being forced to delay the election because of foot and mouth. If Brown waits all the way to June 2010 he has no such wiggle room, if there is a fuel protest or a major strike or some political scandal he can’t shelve the election for a season.
4) Signs of preparation. Labour are getting on with selecting candidates in unwinnable seats, ConservativeHome reported a rumour of Labour candidates getting all their candidate with Gordon photos done this month, the implication being they are for election leaflets. The NEC has apparently set up a new campaigning fund for future donations to go into. It would be wrong to say that Labour are going onto an election footing, we would have picked up much firmer signs, but the foundations are going down.
5) The cutting and running argument wouldn’t wash. If a big reason against calling an election is how it would look, the reality is that it would be only one day’s news story. Once an election really gets started the media and the political parties will be talking about more important things than the timing of the election.
6) He hasn’t ruled it out. There has been a lot of speculation about an early election, even in September and October it kept cropping up. While Gordon Brown has made coded comments about concentrating on getting on with the job he has conspicuously failed to rule out an early election.

On the other hand…

1) Going for an early undermines Brown’s selling point and the narrative that has got Labour back in the running. Currently Brown’s recovery rests on the message that he is the steady, reliable hand on the tiller at a time of crisis, that the country doesn’t need any risky alternatives, just let solid, trustworthy Gordon get on with the task at hand. Obviously this doesn’t sit well with calling an election that isn’t needed for a year - people would ask why Brown was calling an election rather than “getting on with the job”. The story might pass quickly, but it would be a very bad start to an election campaign.
2) You can do a lot in 18 months. At the moment Gordon Brown is Prime Minister and has a substantial majority in the Commons. If he goes now he might be the biggest party in a hung parliament and cobble together a deal with the Lib Dems, he might even scrape a majority. Then again, he might be kicked out, in which case he can do nothing at all and has thrown away his premiership. It isn’t actually a very good bet, and there is nothing forcing him to take it. Even if he has, say, a 30% chance of winning an election now or a 5% chance of winning one in 2010, if he waits till 2010 he has a guarantee of 18 months of being Prime Minister and running the country. That’s not something to be thrown away lightly.
3) On the present polls he would still lose. There is a tendency to take the most recent poll as gospel and think “only 3 points - it’s really close”. In fact we should be looking at the broader picture of the polls, judging the figures produced by all the pollsters and at present there are still companies producing figures that show a Conservative victory - indeed ICM, who have one of the very best track records, have a 13 point Tory lead. The smallest Conservative leads in the polls are found in polls where the level of Lib Dem support has collapsed to the low teens and it seems unlikely they wouldn’t reclaim some of the support they have lost to Labour in the past few weeks once they had the enforced TV coverage an election campaign affords them. It’s perfectly possible that in the future the polls as a whole will suggest that labour could win an election, but right now, the broader picture still shows that the Conservatives would win the hypothetical “general election tomorrow”.
4) Even considering it risks disaster. Last October’s non-election was a disaster for Brown and he can’t risk repeating it. As Ben Brogan suggests here, if it was under consideration it would have to be kept incredibly quiet, but even so. It’s almost impossible to really keep an election under wraps - advertising contracts and extra staff are necessary, but give the game away. If Brown allowed whispers of another election to start building steam and then was seen to chicken-out a second time the damage to his image doesn’t bear thinking about.
5) Character. Put simply, whatever the arguments, Gordon Brown has shown himself to be rather risk adverse and not someone who relishes elections.

It’s a big month-on-month change, and like Mike Smithson, I wouldn’t be surprised if part of it is related to an increase in Labour’s voters’ certainly to vote, but we’ll have to wait for the detailled tables to be published before we’ll know for sure.

While there is a sharp drop in Conservative support here, it brings it more into line with the sort of figures most other pollsters are showing. Labour though are up to their highest figure for many months, above the support they received at the last election. The Lib Dems are right down to 12%, the same as ComRes’s poll. Frankly I thought that figure looked somewhat suspicious and there seemed to be fewer former Liberal Democrats in ComRes’s sample than usual - but now we’ve had a couple of polls in a row with dire figures for the third party.

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While I’m here, a pre-emptive blast at anyone tempted to describe this as a statisical dead-heat (I know you, dear readers, would never stoop so low, but there are other people out there!) since the figures are within the margin of error. A 3 point margin of error (though MORI actually quote their turnout filtered figures as having a margin of error of 4 points) does NOT mean that any score within that range is equally likely. With the Tories at 40% in this poll, it doesn’t mean they are equally likely to be at 43% as they are at 39%, for example. It is more likely to be towards the middle of the range, and their most likely actual level of support is 40%.

On a normal 3% margin of error, 95% of the time the “real” number will be within 3% of the given number. However, 80% of the time it will be within 2% of the given number and 50% of the time it will be within 1%. If a poll shows two parties at 49% and 51%, they are not in a dead heat; it is more likely than not that the party with the higher score is ahead.

Not of course, that any of that changes the fact that things are looking very, very close.

UPDATE: No tables, but Mike Smithson’s been in touch with MORI and they’ve told him that the past vote in the poll was pretty much the same as last month, which had past vote shares of CON 23%, LAB 31%, LDEM 10.5%. This rules out the possiblity that the poll just had far more former Labour voters this month than last month.

UPDATE 2: The tables are here. Surprisingly none of the increase seems to be to do with Labour supporters being more likely to vote - in October 56% of Labour voters were 10/10 likely to vote, now it’s 53%. The shift seems more to be 2005 Labour and Lib Dem voters who said they would vote Tory a month ago, now saying they’d vote Labour - not, I should add, that one should put too much weight on little shifts in the cross-breaks. For the record, the political balance of the sample is slightly different from last month - this month’s sample is made of up 21% people who say they voted Tory in 2005, 30% people who say they voted Labour and only 9% who say they voted Lib Dem.

In terms of optimism on the economy, 87% think the economy is in a bad state compared to 90% last month. In contrast 56% now expect a recession over the next 12 months, compared to 51% last month.

Given the discussion in the comments here about the relative numbers of people who the interest rate cut would benefit or harm, I should also highlight a question YouGov asked about how the rate cut would affect people. 22% of people said it would help their finances (if that seems small, it’s worth remembering about half of outstanding mortgages are on a fixed rate), with most of them saying they would save the money rather than spend it. 19%, including 38% of over 55s, said that they rely upon savings so the rate cut would hurt them.

Moving on, YouGov also asked about swearing on television. A plurality (49%) opposed a blanket ban on swearing on TV, with 39% supporting the idea. As might be expected this was heavily correlated with age, with 64% of over 55s supporting the idea and 68% of under 35s opposing it. 30% supported a total ban on “the F-word” on television, with 63% supporting it being banned before 9pm (41%) or 11pm (23%). 55% supported a ban on “the C-word” on TV, 40% supporting it being banned before 9pm (21%) or 11pm (19%). Asked about the role of the BBC in general, 66% thought it should continue to offer a rule range of programmes, with 28% thinking it should concentrate more on public service television “such as news, documentaries and drama” and less on general entertainment.

Finally YouGov asked some more questions about Prince Charles. They found 44% expected him to be a good king, with 32% disagreeing. 65% thought he should continue to speak out when he becomes King, and 49% believed it would benefit the country if the monarch had a voice on current political controversies, with 38% disagreeing - which either suggests lots of cunning republicans, or that people don’t really understand the importance of the monarchy avoiding any perceived political partisanship.

Well, looking at polls since the bank bailout was announced in October the pollsters are actually all showing very similar levels of support for the Conservatives. Leaving aside BPIX whose high Conservative scores we can’t really speculate about given the lack of details about their methodology, other pollsters have ben pretty solid in showing the Tories in the 41%-43% range.

The difference is more in the Labour level of support, and here I think we are seeing a knock on effect from the Liberal Democrat and “Other” scores. The lower levels of Labour support have come from ICM and ComRes who are respectively the pollsters who show a higher level of Lib Dem support and a higher level of support for “Others”. YouGov, who tend to show the lowest level of Lib Dem support, have shown some of the narrowest leads for the Conservatives.

The wider pattern seems to be that the Conservative support, while dropping from their highest scores, has been quite resilient and stayed above 40%. The narrowing lead has largely come from non-Conservative supporters rallying to the Labour party. With that in mind it makes sense that the pollsters with the methodologies that show the highest support for Lib Dems and others will produce a lower level of Labour support.

This is the first poll from any pollster for a while to show any significant boost in the Conservative vote - the trend has been of slight falls in Conservative support and Labour recovery. As ever, I’d treat a poll that appears to contradict the trend in all the other polls with some scepticism unless we see some other polls showing a Conservative boost - that goes double given the extremely low Liberal Democrat score, equalling their lowest recorded under Clegg.

The other questions in the poll found 48% of people thought that the team around David Cameron was lightweight, 57% thought that Gordon BRown should not take most of the blame for unemployment. 54% of people still think that Labour will lose the election regardless of who leads it (for comparison, 68% thought this in July).

Finally, and most significantly, 75% thought that any tax cuts should be paid for by cutting spending rather than borrowing more, only 17% disagreed. With all the parties proposing various tax cuts the dividing lines are becoming, firstly, the specifics of which tax cuts they are proposing, and more fundementally whether they should be funded by borrowing or not. There have not been many questions directly addressing it yet, but as in this case, those I’ve seen have all show a very hostile public reaction to extra borrowing.

The 5 point Tory lead is the smallest lead since April and the smallest from YouGov since December last year. It echoes the move towards Labour that we saw in Populus at the beginning of the week. Notably, like most other polls, the Conservatives are still sticking above 40%, with Labour’s growing support coming from the Liberal Democrats and “others”. The dates aren’t available yet, but the chances are it was conducted between Wednesday and Friday and most of YouGov’s fieldwork occurs at the start of their fieldwork period, so if there is a “baby p” effect on the polls we wouldn’t necessarily be seeing it yet.

The most recent poll we have was Populus, conducted last weekend straight after Glenrothes and the large interest rate cut - that showed the lowest Conservative lead for months at only 6 points. In contrast these polls would have been conducted at the end of this week with the tragic case of “baby p” the dominant news story.

Some of the links won’t be working yet, some of the parties still need logos on their comments over on the constituency guide part of the site and there are a few other things that still to be finished off, but I should be ironing them out in the next few weeks.

So, with all that in mind why am I doing it? Two reasons: the first is that there is demand for it, and if I don’t provide it other people will, and will do it less well. My firm belief is that the best way to follow the polls is to look at individual pollsters, see what their trends are and understand the differences in approach that result in the differences between them. I hope that regular readers here will always judge polls in this manner. The reality is that, especially as we approach the next election, is that many people (and newspapers!) can’t be bothered to do that, and just want one nice figure that shows them what “the polls” show. Since someone will provide it, I thought I’d better do it properly.

A second reason is that it allows me to put up a running projection of what the current polls would translate into on a uniform swing. At the end of the day, the one question a lot of people want to know the answer too when they look for polls is “if there was an election now, what would the result be?” To do that, we need a figure representing what “the polls” show.

In the past there have been a couple of different approaches to polling averages. The first is a straight rolling average of the last five polls - what the graph on my voting intention page shows. That is vulnerable, however, to being skewed by having a lot of polls from a particular pollster in it. Secondly you can take the average of the latest poll from each company. That has the downside of what you do with companies who poll irregularly, or what happens if they miss a poll. You also miss out on good quality data from pollsters who produce lots of polls, while include aging stuff from pollsters who produce data less regularly (as Nate Silver, who produces the US averages on www.fivethirtyeight.com said when he justified including data from more than one poll from the same pollster in his averages “getting SurveyUSA’s sloppy seconds may be as good as getting virgin results from a lot of pollsters”). Another quite common approach is to weight data according to sample size, something I particularly dislike since in the past the polls with the largest sample sizes have certainly not been the most accurate (ICM, for example, who have one of the most enviable records, normally have the smallest sample size).

What the UKPR Polling average will do is weight the polls that go in according to how recent they are and the track record of the polling company. They will also factor in some methodological and transparency issues and whether there are other polls of the same company in the average (as a compromise to stop mulitiple polls from the same company having too much effect). I’m never going to like polling averages, but given they are going to exist, I can at least provide the very best one I can.

Moving on, as well as their headline voting intention figures Populus also asked about views of the USA following Barack Obama’s victory, reasing some questions they first asked in June 2006. Back then 44% of people thought that America was a force for good in the world, that has now risen to 54%. In 2006 58% thought that it was important for Britain’s long-term security that we have a close and special relationship with the USA - that has now risen to 80%.

The same poll suggested that Gordon Brown had won the first round in the battle to cash in on being seen as close to Obama. Brown was seen as closer to Obama in terms of beliefs and policies than David Cameron by 35% to 25%; he was seen as more likely to build a strong working relationship with Obama than David Cameron is by 42% to 35%. On the other hand David Cameron was seen as better representing “the kind of change and progress in Britain that Barack Obama says he represents in America” by 34% to 30%.

Finally, generously splashing out on all of one question (the money they are saving on Jonathan Ross’s salary they could afford some proper, thorough polling) an ICM poll for the BBC found that 68% of people thought that the UK should withdraw troops from Afghanistan within a year.