Why have the polls suddenly shifted?

Over on Political Betting Mike Smithson is giving thought to the shift in the polls since the Budget.

It's worthwhile doing so.

I am always pretty suspicious of looking at a poll or two, reflecting on the headline figure for the Tory lead and working backwards to political conclusions. Usually the movement is inside the margin of error and even if it isn't the change is temporary.

This time, even if the change disappears again quickly, I think, following ICM this morning, that probably there has been some sort of shift.

So what might have caused it?

Not the measures in the Budget. Populus's work for us immediately afterwards suggest that it is most unlikely that any individual proposal would have changed anything politically. People thought, if anything, that a Tory budget would have been worse.

Nor do I find Mike Smithson's suggestion - that it is all down to the quality of presentation - all that convincing. I wonder how much people really noticed that.

I am more inclined to the theory put to me by my colleague Tim Hames. Last week was the first time where the R word (recession) became real to people - they realised that the UK economy was in trouble and that no one official was attempting to deny it. This changed the atmosphere.

Comments

[Step]

If you look at the details of the YouGov poll you see that across all ages and regions 65%-15% agree that Labour did not put money away in the good times to provide for the bad. If Cammo just hammers that message for the next two years and appears not-nasty, he's on for a big working majority in 2010.

[Mike Wood]

They're not necessarily mutually exclusive.
People can believe that the measures in last week's budget were necessary or desirable but that does not mean that they were sufficient for dealing with the economic problems that the country is now facing.
Darling's attempts to talk up the economy sounded more like Norman Lamont's green shoots of recovery and were completely at odds with how a lot of people see the economy at the moment. At the same time he gave the impression that, where he did recognise that there were economic problems, he was singularly incapable of dealing with them.

[Richard Young]

Step - better yet, by 2010 the economy ought to be on the turn. Davey can hit Brown with the R word (responsibility as much as recession) and gets a free ride into buoyancy in time for the 2014 poll. Nice work if you can get it...