LONDON (MNI), May 4 – The latest raft of polls suggest the
Conservatives are on track to become the largest party and, if you place
much weight on polls in marginal constituencies, they could end up with
a narrow majority.

The polls, seemingly inexplicably in terms of newsflow, showed the
Conservative lead narrowing Monday having widened at the weekend. A 10
poll average shows Labour support at 27.5%, Conservative support at 35%
and Liberal Democrat at 27.3%. The range in these 10 polls has been
wide, with the Labour vote put at anywhere between 23% and 29%, the
Conservatives between 33% and 38% and the Liberal Democrats 23% and 30%.

If the 10-poll averages are plugged into the type of widely
available uniform national swing model, for example the BBC’s, they show
the Conservatives become the largest party, but this falls 46 seats
short of an overall parliamentary majority. Polls of battleground
constitutencies, and some psephologists, however, suggest the
Conservatives are going to get a lot closer to an overall majority than
that.

One poll which made the headlines over the long Bank Holiday
weekend was IPSOS MORI’s for Reuters. This focused on seats where the
vote at the 2005 election was close between Labour and Conservative, and
it found a 7% swing from Labour to Conservative.

In the commentary, a MORI representative was quoted as saying that
with Conservatives needing a 6.9% swing in these marginals for an
outright majority, this could result in them getting a 2-seat majority.

The poll, however, did not cover any marginal seats involving the
third party, the Liberal Democrats, which has seen its support rise
sharply in this campaign compared to 2005.

The Telegraph newspaper filled that gap, publishing Tuesday a new
poll of marginal seats by Crosby/Textor. This looked at both the 140
Labour seats where the Conservatives require the smallest percentage
swing to win, and the 20 seats held by the Liberal Democrats which are
top of the Conservative’s LibDem target list.

This poll echoed the IPSOS/MORI one in finding a 7.5% swing from
Labour to the Conservatives in Labour/Conservative battleground seats,
but it also showed a 3 point swing from Conservative to the LibDems in
those two parties’ battleground seats.

At the start of the election, the talk was of Conservatives having
20 Liberal Democrats seats in their top hundred target list. The
Crosby/Textor poll suggests the Conservative will fail to gain any
LibDem seats and may even lose a handful of seats to them.

The Telegraph said the Crosby/Textor marginal poll showed the
Conservatives were on track to win 103 seats from Labour, but that would
leave them 14 seats short of the 117 seats they need to gain to get an
overall majority.

Some psephologists concur with the scenario of Conservatives just
missing out on an overall majority.

A team at the University of Manchester, which publishes its work on
the Politics Home website, said Monday the polls showed the
Conservatives falling 28 seats short of an overall majority.

The US-based fivethirtyeight.com, which made its name with
strikingly detailed predictions of the triumphs of the Democrats lead by
Barack Obama, updated its forecasts to show the Conservatives winning
308 parliamentary seats, 18 short of an overall majority.

The following tables show the most recent national polls.

!End ! !Media ! ! ! !Conservative!
!Date of! !Outlet ! ! !Liberal !Lead Vs !
!Survey !Pollster! !Labour!Conservative!Democrat!Labour !
————————————————————————
03-May YouGov Sun 28 35 28 7
03-May Opinium Express 28 33 27 5
02-May YouGov Sun 28 34 29 6
02-May ComRes ITV 29 37 26 8
02-May ICM Guardian 28 33 28 5
01-May ComRes S. Mirror 28 38 25 10
01-May BPIX S. Mail 27 34 30 7
01-May YouGov S. Times 27 35 28 8
30-Apr AngusR S. Express 23 35 29 12
30-Apr ICM S. Tel. 29 36 23 7
————————————————————————
10 poll average 27.5 35 27.3 7.5
High 29 38 30 12
Low 23 33 23 5
————————————————————————
–London newsroom: 4420 7862 7491 email:ukeditorial@marketnews.com

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