“The ComRes poll for Daily Politics suggests the contest would go to the full four rounds of counting, if the results of interviews with 265 councillors in England and Wales were replicated amongst Labour members across the country.”

Yes, if the views of Labour councillors in England and Wales were representative of normal Labour party members (including those in Scotland) then indeed it would go to all four rounds, and David Miliband would win. That is, also assuming that members of affiliated trade unions and Labour MPs and MEPs voted the same way too. That is rather a big if though, and there is no particular reason to think Labour councillors are representative of the wider Labour party. It does also assume that none of the campaign since mid-August has had any effect, as the fieldwork is a month old.

Secondly there is a ComRes poll, with significantly different figures. They have topline figures of CON 38%(-1), LAB 34%(+1), LDEM 18%(+3). This is a much higher level of Lib Dem support than YouGov are showing, up from 15% in ComRes’s last poll, apparenly at the expense of “others”. Interestingly enough, ComRes’s press release says that the proportion of Lib Dem 2010 voters who have defected to Labour has risen from 15% a month ago to 22% now, which is rather odd given the rise in overall support – presumably they have picked up enough support elsewhere to cancel it out.

There is also a YouGov poll in the Scottish Mail on Sunday. Holyrood constitutency voting intentions there are CON 19%, LAB 39%, LDEM 11%, SNP 29%. Holyrood regional voting stands at CON 15%, LAB 36%, LDEM 12%, SNP 26%. Note that the write-up in the Herald says the poll was conducted a month ago. I guess they’ve got the dates wrong there, and it was actually carried out this week – I’ll confirm when I get in the office on Monday.

As we get close to the Pope’s visit to Britain this month, there are also two polls asking questions about it. A poll for the Tablet by MORI found 25% supported the visit, 11% opposed it with 63% having no strong view. 29% of Catholics interviewed said they were likely to go to one of the events during the Pope’s visit.

Asked about the Catholic church in general 49% had a positive view about the Catholic church having strong moral views. 41% agreed it was a force for good, with 17% disagreeing (this was asked as a split sample – the other half of respondents were asked about religion in general, where 52% thought religion was a force for good, and 22% a force for bad. On the specific issue of the child abuse scandal, 55% thought the Catholic church had responded badly, only 11% thought they had dealt with th

MORI also tested if people could identify Pope Benedict – 65% correct identified a photo of him. This compared to 50% who recognised Rowan Williams, 73% Fabio Capello, 86% Simon Cowell, 90% David Cameron and 95% Prince Charles.

There was also a ComRes poll on the visit for Theos. ComRes asked if people agreed or disagreed with 12 statements taken from the Pope’s encyclical letter, Caritas in Veritate. In almost every case people overwhelmingly agreed, largely one suspects because they were pretty bland, inoffensive, non-religious statements, such as “We must prioritise the goal of access to steady employment for everyone” or “The natural environment is more than raw material to be manipulated at our pleasure”. The only statement that people disagreed with was the sole one to mention god: “Poverty is often produced by a rejection of God’s love”, which 81% of people disagreed with.

Despite agreeing with most of the statements he made, people were broadly negative towards whether or not the Pope should comment on world issues. Only 18% thought he responded wisely to issued (49% disagreed), 40% said they generally disagreed with the Pope’s views (20% disagreed) and 41% thought the Pope should not speak out on social and political issues (36% disagreed). I suspect the apparent disconnect between these two banks of questions is down to people associating the Pope with his views on things like abortion, homosexuality, contraception and the church’s child abuse scandal, rather than his views on the environment and the economy.

Asked what his greatest achievements were as Prime Minister, the minimum wage and bringing peace to Northern Ireland came top by some distance (interestingly, the minimum wage was seen as Blair’s greatest acheivement even by Conservative voters, whereas things like his record on the economy and public services were mainly picked by Labour supporters). His greatest failures were seen as failing to tackle immigration and, unsurprisingly, the invasion of Iraq.

Finally, in the context of the leadership election, we asked whether Labour should distance itself from Blair’s legacy to get back into power, or whether it would be a mistake for them to turn their back on the legacy of a PM who won three elections. It was a pretty even divide, 30% said Labour should distance themselves, 34% it would be a mistake. Amongst Labour supporters, 59% said it would be a mistake for Labour to turn their back on Blair’s legacy.

Meanwhile, there were mixed results on the daily trackers. Government disapproval was the lowest yet for the coalition on minus 4 (38% approve, 42% disapprove). However, voting intention was far more positive for the Conservatives, CON 43%, LAB 37%, LDEM 12%. 6 points is the biggest Tory lead for a fortnight.

Also worth noting is the AV referendum voting intention question from yesterday, which I overlooked at the time. NO is now ahead by 39% to 37%. Still within the margin of error and a huge distance to go, but it suggests the YouGov poll a fortnight ago showing No ahead for the first time was not just a blip.

ICM did a poll on Faith schools for Channel 4. On the principle of faith schools, 37% thought there should be faith shools, 59% disagreed (although the wording was a bit harsh – the anti-faith school argument said “schools should be for everyone regardless of religion”, so it’s possible some people who picked that option may have supported faith schools if they were not allowed to select on the basis of religion). On the subject of admissions, 37% thought it was understandable the lengths some parents went to get their children into their preferred school, with 60% saying it was wrong for parents to pretend to belong to a religion to get into a school. People were split on whether or not schools should have a daily religious assembly – 45% agreed they should, 44% disagreed.

Moving on, there was a short YouGov poll commissioned by the Ed Balls leadership campaign and the CWU on whether the post office should be privatised or not. 60% thought it should remain wholly in public ownership, 13% that is should be part-privatised and 15% that is should be privatised completely.

Interestingly enough, we used pretty much the same wording for this poll as for this poll of Labour members for Compass back in 2009 – back then 66% of Labour members opposed privatisation, 24% supported part-privatisation and 5% complete privatisation, giving us the rather surprising result that Labour members are marginally more likely to support privatisation than the general public. The reason for this odd answer is straightforward – back in 2009 it was Labour party policy to support post-office part-privatisation – I suspect Labour party members would be much less supportive now it is the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition government doing it! On the subject of party supporters becoming more positive towards a policy when their own side puts it forward, there’s a good article here (hat tip to Paul Goodman at ConHome).

Finally, here’s some interesting bits and pieces from the YouGov daily polls. Following Eric Pickles instructions to councils to have less road signs and clutter, 43% of people agreed there were too many road signs on Britain’s roads, 10% too few and 37% that the balance was about right. (here). And finally, on THE BIG ISSUE of the last week, 84% of people said they though the cat-binning lady should be prosecuted for animal cruelty. (here).

The only poll I’m aware of tonight is the regular YouGov/Sunday Times figures at 10pm.

Assembly constituency: CON 22%(+2), LAB 39%(-1), LDEM 10%(-3), PC 23%(+1)
Assembly regional: CON 21%(+1), LAB 39%(+2), LDEM 9%(-5), PC 23%(-3)

UPDATE: By my reckoning, on a uniform swing this would give the Conservatives 12 assembly seats (nc), Labour 28 (up 2), the Liberal Democrats 5 (down 1), Plaid 14 (down 1) and 1 Independent.

Voting intention tonight is at CON 41%, LAB 38%, LDEM 13%

Government approval has been on a slow downwards trajectory since the its peak straight after the emergency budget in June. This has been partially down to Labour voters’ hardening disapproval of the government, and partially due to falling Liberal Democrat support. The remaining Liberal Democrat voters still say they approve of the governent’s performance, but there are far fewer of them.

In voting intention, the level of Conservative support actually remains strong. Our daily polling has shown them consistently at or above 40% since the budget, significantly above the 37% support they received at the general election. Their narrowing lead in the polls is actually down to Labour increasing their support off the back of the collapse in Liberal Democrat support. Labour are consistently polling at around 37%, up 7 from their general election score, while Liberal Democrat support stands at just over half their general election vote.

The drop in government approval is to be expected, with the exception of the Blair government after 1997 (and to some extent 2001, when the government’s approval dropped, but then spiked after the attack on the Twin Towers), no British government sustains a positive approval rating for long. The Conservatives rating in the polls remains quite positive, but I’d expect that to start falling at some point once the cuts really start to bite: again, it is clearly what they expect, the Conservative strategy appears to be to take the unpopularity to start with and hope to recover once the cuts have been digested and the economy is in better shape. Right now, the interesting poll rating is that of the Liberal Democrats – the Conservatives have 5 years to get over low poll ratings… unless the coalition falls apart. To date the Lib Dems have been pretty sanguine about the collapse in support, despite stories about Charles Kennedy’s non-defection or Simon Hughes’s semi-regular soundings off, there is no obvious sign of panic.

In a separate poll, YouGov have also released voting intention figures for Holyrood constituency vote carried out for the SNP. Topline figures are CON 14%, LAB 36%, LDEM 12%, SNP 35%. Full results here

Westminster: CON 14%, LAB 40%, LDEM 13%, SNP 29%
Holyrood Constituency: CON 11%, LAB 37%, LDEM 13%, SNP 34%
Holyrood Regional: CON 12%, LAB 38%, LDEM 12%, SNP 29%

The poll also asked if people in Scotland supported the release of Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi one year on. 35% think it was right, 54% wrong. This compares to 42% right and 45% wrong when MORI orginally asked back in 2008.