Could this poll cause MPs/MEPs to switch brothers?

Could this poll cause MPs/MEPs to switch brothers?

Members Trade unionists MPs/MEPs
Ed Miliband 52 (+2) 57 (+13) 44 (-1)
David Miliband 48 (-2) 43 (-13) 56 (+1)

Could DaveM suffer from the David Davis effect?

At last! A new YouGov poll of party members and those trade unionists who are able to vote in Labour’s leadership election – and how things have changed since the last such survey at the end of July.

A key part of David Miliband’s strategy as he’s sought to win the Labour leadership has been to get over that his eventual victory is almost a forgone conclusion. This might explain why on the Left Food Forward ongoing tally (seen in the table above) the ex-foreign secretary has continued to make progress.

But the overnight YouGov polling of party members and trade unionists blasts a hole right through that and taking all the numbers into account Ed Miliband is ahead overall by a narrow margin.

Could those MPs who were backing DaveM now be less enthusiastic given that their man is no longer the certainty that he was?

That is, of course, what happened in the 2005 Tory race. David Davis had built up a huge list of public declarations of support from party MPs – but when it came to the vote far fewer put their crosses by his name.

On the overnight poll we have not got the full data yet and the above is my extrapolation from the available information of the splits in the party member and trade unionists section on the final crucial question on which of the brothers those polled would prefer.

The figures in brackets are the changes on the last such poll at the end of July and show the real momentum that the younger brother has built up amongst party members and those trade union members who are entitled to vote in this election.

As would be expected the latest polling has had a big impact on the betting. The last traded figure for David Miliband as I write (4am) was 1.37 – last week it moved in to 1.22. His brother Ed is now at 4 compared with a price of five in the hour before the YouGov news came out. I expect both these trends to continue

Mike Smithson

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