Frantic phone round erodes Cruddas lead?

Last night's TV Deputy Leader debate may have little influence on the real voting, but it appears that web savvy, night owl, Jon Cruddas supporters have alarmed and galvanised the other candidate's back up teams to spend the day drumming up support in the Newsnight poll.

From a peak of almost 44% with 526 votes cast in the wee small hours, Jon's share had shrunk to 35% with 3103 votes by 1700 hours tonight.

This was still marginally ahead of the combined votes of Harman [20.05%] and Johnson[14.63%] with Blears, Benn and Hain propping up the poll.

It will be interesting to see if teams well versed in the mysteries of ensuring "bums on seats" can produce sufficient fingers on mice to bridge the gap
in the few hours before Newsnight reveal the results.

The BBC point out that
"Results are indicative and may not reflect public opinion"
and we can hope that their poll software excludes any "vote early and vote often tactics"

The Cruddas performance seems to have impressed a self selecting sub-group of Newsnight afficionados, but what of those who opted for Alan Yentob and surrealism, or E-17 Reunited?
The real job - in the real election - will be to persuade Unite members to use their vote -or votes if they are individual Labour Party members -in sufficient numbers to more than counterbalance the expected MP vote.