Polling update

With Anthony and Matt both away, here's a quick analysis of the latest Guardian/ICM opinion poll (full details here - pdf file) which gave the following result:

Labour 35% (+1)
Conservatives 30% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 25% (+3)
Others 10% (-3) - there is a subdivision of the 'others' revealing shares as UKIP 3%, Greens 3% and SNP/Plaid Cymru 3%

From memory and the back of an envelope, at a general election that result would be a 7% Lab to LD swing, 5% Con to LD swing and about a 2% Labour to Conservative swing.

Putting the figures into Martin Baxter's election predictor gives a predicted result for those figures of Conservative 161 (-5), Labour 375 (-37) and Liberal Democrats 80 (+28) for a Labour majority of 105. Anthony's swing calculator (Excel file) gives a slightly different result of Conservative 173 (+4), Labour 370 (-42) and Liberal Democrats 72 (+20) with Nationalists getting 11 seats leading to a Labour majority of 95.

The rest of the poll has some interesting data as well - 55% of people now think Blair lied over Iraq against 37% who thought he didn't and only 38% of people think the war was justifed, with 56% saying it wasn't.

There's also a sampling of polling information if Brown was Labour leader - 41% Labour, 30% Conservative, 22% Liberal Democrat, 8% others. That would give a labour majority of 155 according to Anthony, 169 according to Martin, both also showing a loss of Conservative seats and a slight gain for the Liberal Democrats.