UK Polling Report points us to the details of the YouGov poll for the News of the World which put the Tories 46-26 ahead of Labour.
What should worry Brown more than the headline figures is that voters of all parties would be more likely to vote Labour if Brown was not leader. Among the electorate as a whole 21 percent say they’d be more to likely to do so if Brown went while 7 percent say they would be less likely to do so. The net figures among Tory supporters is plus 14, plus 16 for Lib Dems and plus eight even amongst the 26 per cent who currently support Labour. In the electorate at large, David Miliband has a narrow edge over Brown on the question of which Labour MP would make the best PM—he is, however, far behind Brown among Labour voters.
One other number worth noting from the poll is that by a small margin, a plurality still says it is generally closer to Labour than any other party—29 percent for Labour compared to 27 percent for the Conservatives. It is this statistic that you hear cited most often by Labour MPs who want to dump Brown, to them it is proof that the Tories have yet to seal the deal and that a new leader would give Labour a fighting chance.
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