Snap election talk after Labour gets poll boost

Should we be preparing ourselves for an early election - in March rather than May? Possibly. The Sunday Times splashed on Labour preparing for a snap election and David Cameron told Sky's political editor Adam Boulton yesterday that he had long had March 25 penciled in his luxury Smythson diary (courtesy Samantha Cameron) and the Tories were ready to roll, thank you very much.

The Sunday Times was basing its snap election theory on its new YouGov opinion poll, which showed the gap between Labour and the Tories had narrowed from 13 to nine points - with Labour on 31 per cent and the Conservatives on 40 per cent.

The only trouble with this is that YouGov was way out of sync with their polling rivals ComRes: their poll for the Independent on Sunday showed the Tories opening up their lead over Labour to a healthy 17 points, suggesting that voters were as unimpressed with Alistair Darling's pre-Budget report as the pundits and that, far from it being a close-run thing, Cameron is well on his way to Downing Street.

The Mole asked a wise old Westminster political consultant last night what to make of the two divergent polls. The answer? Wait for the next one (from Ipsos-MORI sometime this week).

The Political Betting website has another way of looking at it - where are the punters putting their money? On the ComRes "it's all over bar the shouting" poll or YouGov's "there's still everything to play for" survey?

Punters, it seems, know the answer: based on "the average of mid-points on the main seat betting markets and then extrapolating that into a General Election outcome" the Tories are on course for a Commons majority of 60. ·