There’s been quite a bit in the nationals recently about the narrowing of the polls, with some putting the Labour lead in single figures. It’s not hugely surprising, I think we are see the Eurosceptic Conservative contingent flipping over to UKIP, which are votes I don’t necessarily think will stay there at the polling booth. In addition, I think there are a couple of other things happening.

People forget that polling is a highly subjective craft that can be made to go one way or the other. Back in the summer of 2008, DC was regularly polling 15 to 19 point leads and the race was on in the press to rubbish the PM and publish the poll with the most ridiculous possible lead. Now the race is on – led by the Observer a couple of weeks ago, to follow the line that the general election is going to be a very close-run thing and publish the “breakthrough” poll that suggests a hung parliament is more or less certain.

I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing for the Conservatives – people will shy away from a hung parliament and where they shy to will more likely be David Cameron than Gordon Brown. These polls are focussing activists and reminding them success is not, nor ever has been, certain. We’ve been here before during the Brown bounce, during the weeks following the collapse of Lehman Bros (about this time last year) and yet the PM has been hammered in subsequent local and Euro elections.

There is no doubt that a sense of optimism about the economy is helping Gordon Brown. But that sense of optimism is totally misplaced because the truth is that he hasn’t been straight with people in this country about how hard it will be after the election to pay off the cost of recession.

And I think that is where DC needs to go next. The economy may feel better, but it’s going to get worse again once those votes in 2010 have been cast. While Labour patters on about Eton and tried to get everyone interested in class warfare, the Conservatives should be sticking with the change argument and the feeling that whatever the apparent green shoots, the party to deliver change and steer the recovery competently is the Conservatives. I think that message will stick.

We also need to take on Labour about it’s appaling record on poverty and wealth creation. A Conservative strategy for poverty alleviation is a vital tool in the governmental box. By getting people into work, we lower the welfare bill and get debt paid off quicker. On the other hand, Labour’s attempts to get people into work have been spectacular failures because they aren’t serious. Far better to leave people on benefit and voting Labour for fear of the Conservatives, they reason.

By taking on Labour over poverty, aspiration and the real cost of recession, we’ll get them busy clearing up after us rather than standing still while Labour plays dirty with the politics of envy. It’s positive message from us about change; and a negative one from them about fear of change.

Could Gordon be gone by April?

There appear to be loudening whispers around Westminster at the moment that a March election could be on the cards. March 25 seems the most likely date for it if the PM wants to go early as it gives more time.

Evidence to suggest that this is at least an option being considered is increasingly stacking up. Firstly, there were the Labour Party staffing advertisements, which have been appearing in greater numbers recently. Secondly, it would offer the PM something of an advantage of surprise. It could also allow him to fight on the basis of Christmas-boosted economic figures and allow him to postpone the pre-Budget report until after an election.

It has certainly caught the minds of journalists at very high-placed political news outlets such as the Spectator, New Statesman and Daily Telegraph. Things don’t just pop into so many journalists’ minds at the same time on the same subject by chance – someone is briefing them. It could be Alistair Campbell, brought back to feed the PM with some snide one-liners about class war. Alternatively, it could be coming from the Conservative side, talking up a March election to get activists focussed and make Brown look scared if he waits until May.

It could be both but it’s certainly an interesting Phoney War. My own feeling is that the election will be on May 6 because Labour simply doesn’t have the money to run two separate campaigns. But then the PM could go on March 25, spend everything on the general election and leave the local elections to dangle – it’s not like Labour’s local government presence could get much worse anyway.

Polls at the moment seem to be narrowing slightly to Labour’s advantage – or more accurately, since the Labour vote is static – to the Conservatives’ disadvantage. A lot of that I think is the fall out from the Lisbon Treaty and Eurosceptics switching to UKIP. Hopefully, by the election time they will understand that a vote for Lord Pearson and his merry crew is a total waste of time and actually helps the PM stay on for another five years. I am confident that many of these UKIP waverers will stay within the Conservative Party but there is a huge amount of work ahead.

The most important thing is not the opinion poll figures but getting your supporters out to vote for you. If Labour thinks they have more chance of doing this in March, so be it.

Both the Ipsos/MORI and ICM pollsters have the Conservative lead back to a pretty decisive 17 points, which is fairly well exactly where we were before the conferences began. The good news for DC is that the Conservative figures of 43% and 44% are where he needs to be for a serious majority – 45% would be ideal. The bad news for him is that the big set-piece Conservative conference, which always follows last, hasn’t permanently impacted in a positive way.

On the other hand, you can say that maintaining a 17-point lead is hard enough, let alone extending it. In response to Denzil Coulson’s questions, I did some research (albeit brief) into how the polls might act in May 2010 based on previous elections and the polls seven months before the polling day.

It showed that the Labour votes usually goes down, the Liberal Democrat vote normally goes up and the Conservative vote stays about the same. If you did that to the current figures, you’d get Con 44%, Lab 24% and Lib 22%. Type that into Electoral Calculus and you get a Conservative majority of 154. From hung Parliament to Tory landslide – now there’s a though to warm a chilly October night.

Of course it depends on where those votes are cast – as usual around 50,000 votes in key marginals will decide the actual result. But that’s the fun!

Will it be a closer race as the election approaches?

Cllr Denzil Coulson responded to my post on the seventeen-point post-DC speech poll lead with a Tweet that a 45% Conservative poll rating at the next election was “very unlikely”. Lo and behold, another poll put the Conservatives on precisely 45%, which I duly tweeted for his attention.

“You and I know that polls tighten during the election campaign”

came the response via Twitter and it’s not an unreasonable one, so I thought I’d look into it, starting in 1992. Back then, polls weren’t as frequent or, as we subsequently came to realise, as accurate as now. But looking seven months out from John Major’s photo-finish election win, ICM/Guardian on 14 September had Con 39, Lab 39 and LD 17. That was the same result in MORI/Times 10 days later. By 12 October, there was a Lab 43, Con 41 LD 12 poll done by ICM/Guardian. I’m not being selective – those are the polls I can find. In the end, the result was Con 42, Labour 34, LD 18. Not much sign of a tightening there – except for one away from the October 12 ICM Labour lead.

In 1997, it is a slightly different story. A November 1 MORI poll has Lab 54, Con 30, LD 12 and a Lab 47, Con 34, LD 15 poll followed the next day by MORI. All other polls in November had Labour above 50 and the Conservatives on around 30. The final result - Lab 43 Con 30 LD 17 – is indeed a tightening of the polls seven months out; but which way are the polls tightening? As in 1992, the move was away from Labour as people who, when questioned, said they would vote Labour stayed at home.

In 2001, four polls in December put Labour on around 46, the Conservatives on 33 and LDs on 15. The actual result – Lab 41, Con 32 and LD 18 – was similarly due to Labour voters staying at home, a lack of enthusiasm for the Conservatives and aggresive Lib Dem campaigning. Yes, a tightening – but a tightening away from Labour. During the last election polls seven months out showed Labour at around 38, the Conservatives on 31 and the Lib Dems on 21. The election result was Lab 35, Con 32 and LD 22 – very close to the polling figures in November.

A few things to note:

1) The Labour vote has always been lower in the election than the average polling figures seven months out, probably due to lower turnout among Labour voters

2) The Conservative vote in polls seven months out since 1992 has been very close to the results on the night

3) The Lib Dem vote has always been higher in elections than polls because they campaign so well

It is also worth stating the obvious – that it depends which polls you look at and where the votes are cast is more important than how many are cast. But the evidence above suggests that Labour’s percentage on the night will be lower than their current polling, that the Lib Dems will do better (just as well given that they are on 16% today)and that the Conservative vote will hold around about where it is now ie the average for the month.

We are, of course, all hostages to fortune and whatever surprises the next seven months may hold. But a quick glance through records shows that the Lib Dems relying on a tighening of polls during an election campaign to produce a hung parliament might be a little misguided. It’s still a possibility if we don’t work hard enough, though.

I didn’t get too excited about the nine-point lead yesterday and I won’t get any more excited about a 17-point lead today. It’s still daily poll, about which I am yet to be convinced, and it comes on the day when DC has received more press coverage – largely positive – than any other.

We saw George Osborne’s speech following by a bounce and then a reality-checking un-bounce. The Labour spinners are out in force over DC – that he has called every single economic decision wrong (although the public appears to reject that) and that his wealth means he can’t understand the concerns of ordinary people. I think this last point will have some resonance but generally only to reinforce antipathy in the minds of those already likely to vote against him ie people will agree with it but still vote for him.

Around 45% is where the Conservative Party needs to be in order to be sure of a decent majority in May. I believe the chances that we will be the largest party after the next election are 99.9% – something extraordinary would have to happen to prevent that. But the electoral system is weighted hugely in Labour’s favour – as I mentioned yesterday, 40% for the Conservatives and 31% for Labour produces a Tory majority of four; if you reverse those figures, Labour gets a majority of 124. There is still a significant chance that despite a good poll lead, DC could face a hung Parliament.

Polls tend to tighten as we go into elections. Sometimes they come out again, as in 1992 and 1997. But in 2005, they got even closer. Conservative high command needs to know that until we are on 45% regularly, anything can happen. They need a really, really effective campaign lined up – with a Cameron bounce every day – to be sure of a majority in the House of Commons worth having.

And in the Parliament we’ve got coming, it’s really important that we don’t end up with a minority government that can be blocked into a stalemate. There’s a lot of hard work ahead in every consistuency.

I don’t think that daily polls tell us much of a story anyway but the news that the Conservative lead over Labour is back into single figures isn’t surprising or worrying to me.

Despite everything that has happened during the past 18 months, George Osborne’s speech on Tuesday outlining cuts that need to be made if we to have any chance of bringing the country’s huge debts under control, will have come as a shock to some people. They probably don’t read a newspaper or listen to the news and use the internet for other things. The simple fact is that not everyone is going to understand the context of George Osborne’s message – for some, it might become clearer later – others will never see the necessity for spending reductions.

Others will understand the message and will have decided that they don’t like it much. Included in that may be thousands of public sector workers who fear for their jobs. For them, the Conservative message could be pretty glum – although it’s a glumness that we in the private sector have had to manage for the past 18 months. Today in the FT, there is an advert for a Deputy Head of Internal Audit at the DfT for £80,000 + benefits and in the Local Government Chronicle for an Interim Change Manager at £35-43k. I could go on.

This stoking of the public jobs market that Labour has indulged in not only has to stop – it has to be redressed. There are, for example, 99,000 soldiers in the Army and 85,000 officials in the MoD. That’s the equivalent of each soldier having a 0.85FT official to look after their needs – it’s clearly ridiculous. And turkeys won’t vote for Christmas – what is important is the creation and expansion of alternative economies for people to move out of the public sector into.

If you put 40%, 31% and 18% into Electoral Calculus, you still get a Conservative government – albeit with a majority of four (the same nine-point lead for Labour produces them a majority of 124). But I’d rather have a Conservative government that will sort out our national problems with a razor-thin majority than a Conservative government that tells people what it thinks they want to hear with a majority of 124.

If people then vote for five more years of Gordon Brown’s denial and escapism, they will get everything they deserve.

Some very interesting polling news from the FT this morning, showing that the Conservatives – despite what the left-wing media will tell you – have done more than enough to cancel out Labour’s majority in the north of England and may even be winning there.

I don’t expect that cities such as Liverpool, Manchester or Middlesborough will be returning many Conservative MPs in 2010 but what this polling shows is that among C1 – classified as “lower middle-class” although I’m not keen on this type of stuff – and C2 (skilled manual workers), the Conservatives are now in the lead.

And both in the north of England, which kept Labour in power in 2005, and in the Midlands the Conservatives now have an overall lead in the polls – in the case of the Midlands, it’s a pretty thumping one too.

Strangely, none of this information appears to have been reported by the BBC, which usually defends itself by saying it doesn’t report “routine polling data”. I seem to remember it gleefully reporting routine polling data when Tony Blair was on the way up and John Major was on the way out – has politics or society really changed that much?

More likely, the BBC has become more aware of the self-fulfilling nature of polls and has come under severe pressure from PM – and the actual PM – to report more serious news - such as the buying out of ConservativeHome by Lord Ashcroft, for example.

For DC, surely this is gold dust ahead of the Conservative Conference – in Manchester. Okay, he’d be a fool to be triumphal about it – but also a fool to ignore the powerful message it sends out to the north of England; that the Conservatives can genuinely be their voice in Westminster.