Opinion polls: Making minds up?

ANALYSIS David Cowling Editor, BBC Political Research

Three polls since the weekend suggest that the gap between Labour and the Conservatives is edging a little in Labour's favour.

NOP, Mori and ICM all show Labour on 38/39%, the Conservatives between 32% and 35%, and the Liberal Democrats consistently on 21%.

NOP/Independent found 25% support for tax cuts of £4 billion, compared with 65% (including 58% of Conservative supporters) who said they preferred spending the money on public services.

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This poll also reported 73% support for the Lib Dem policy of increasing the top rate of tax from 40p to 50p in the pound for those earning more than £100,000 a year.

Mori/London Evening Standard suggests that almost two-thirds of respondents (64%) have already definitely decided to vote for the party of their choice, compared with 32% who said they may change their minds.

Conservative supporters seem most certain of their intentions - 73% say they have definitely decided, compared with 65% of Labour and 57% of Lib Dem supporters.

Tactics

When they tried to assess how far tactical voting contributed to individual party support, 80% of respondents in the Mori survey said their main reason for voting the way they intended was because the party concerned most represented their views.

However, 12% overall said that because their preferred party stood little chance of winning locally they would be voting for another party in order to keep a third party out of the seat.

Whereas this group appeared to constitute about one in ten Conservative and Labour supporters, they accounted for one in five Lib Dem supporters.

Mori also asked whether "you and your family would be financially better off under a Labour or a Conservative government?" They found 36% nominating Labour and 28% the Conservatives and 24% saying they did not know.

After a faltering start, Labour appear to be in their stride. There are weeks yet to go during which all sorts of things could happen but for this week at least the focus has shifted onto the economy and public spending.

Clearly the Conservatives have things to say on these subjects, but they represent territory where Labour is stronger in terms of public support than on the issue of asylum and immigration - where the Tories have tried to anchor much of the election campaign so far.