The pollsters on polling: In this era of constant electioneering do governments still recover from the mid-term onwards?

We've asked three of Britain's leading opinion pollsters, Stephan Shakespeare of YouGov, Andrew Hawkins of CommunicateResearch and Ben Page of Ipsos MORI, five questions on polling:

Yesterday we revelled the answer to the first question: Blair is still in office. The public have yet to see Brown in Downing Street. Then there's the silly and party conference seasons. When will be a good time to start taking the headline polls seriously again? You can see the answers our experts gave here.

Our second question is: The traditional view is that governments are most unpopular in the middle of their terms and their popularity generally increases closer to elections. In this era of constant electioneering does that historical pattern still hold true?

Watch what our panel said below but here's a quick summary: Ben Page, yes it has, look at the last two Labour Governments, but you can't say it always will be; Andrew Hawkins yes it is true but every Parliament is different and Stephan Shakespeare says that in a time of constant electioneering we cannot always assume a party's popularity will return.