Could such a survey be the decider for Gord?

For poll watchers last week’s Channel 4 News from the YouGov panel in the immediate aftermath of Brown’s speech was a great innovation.

For it’s always been suggested that the publicity that leaders’ speeches attract do give a big boost in poll ratings but I cannot recall a time when we have been able see this from reaction within little more than 24 hours while the coverage was still dominating the headlines.

It would have been great the week before to have seen whether an instant poll after Ming’s speech had had an impact on Lib Dem ratings.

I hope we can look forward to Channel 4 repeating the exercise in the aftermath of Wednesday’s speech by Cameron. It will enable us to compare like with like. Labour’s lead went up 5% in the immediate aftermath of Brown’s speech – what will be the scale of the Cameron effect?

For party conference season involves the media stepping up a gear in their coverage of politics and it becomes much closer to what we would expect in a general election campaign.

Mike Smithson