Iain Dale sees it as too close to call. The overall figures (all those mentioning a candidate) were 56% for Clegg, 44% for Huhne. In principle it is a sizeable lead but not out of reach.

The complication is that many people have already voted. YouGov put the figure at about 50% - and calculate that Clegg has a 58% to 42% lead among those who have already cast their vote.

If this is correct it suggests that Clegg has a lead of around 5000 votes in the urns (assuming around 32000 people have voted). So to win, Huhne needs a lead of more than 5000 from those voters still to cast their votes. What makes it difficult is that
a) they won't all vote (turnout last time was 72% - there are probably only 16000 votes to be cast in the election
b) Clegg still leads among those who haven't cast their votes (by 54% to 46% if one excludes the don't knows).

So if you accept the poll as representative, Huhne now needs a massive vote from the last remaining voters - he would need more than two-thirds of the vote from this bunch of voters. This poll cannot be used as evidence that the result is in much doubt (and this is the way Sky now report it).

You can of course discount the poll completely. No one knows how representative the Liberal Democrat members in the YouGov database are. and the poll last time around was hugely innaccurate (leading questions may have contributed to this). I'm normally a critic of YouGov, and perfectly happy to join in.

But some of the details of this poll ring true. The turnout to date looks about right, and I believe both leadership campaigns have identified a higher Clegg score in votes cast already. And I see that Mike Smithson responded to it by putting as much money on Clegg as the bookies would accept.

I'm a Clegg supporter and will be happy enough if the poll is correct. Indeed I think we will have had a pretty good leadership campaign: an attractive new leader who will worry both Labour and Tory parties, a credible opponent who has raised his profile, and of course an absolute blinder from the interim leader. We haven't had the tabloid coverage we had last time around. But hey, you can't have everything...