Diane James – the Ukip candidate in #Eastleigh twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st…

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) February 15, 2013

Many of those registered to vote by post received their ballot packs yesterday and if past elections are anything to go by then a sizeable proportion will have been completed and posted them back by tomorrow morning. The election has already started.

My reading is that the Labour vote will be squeezed by the sheer intensity of the LD campaign.

The reason the yellows deliver so many leaflets so often is that it gets the message over to wavering voters, particularly LAB ones, that they are the party best placed to block the Conservative.

At the other side of the coin my view is that the ongoing media narrative about the CON candidate is turning some normal blue voters into purple ones for this election at least.

Tpfpkar, a Lib Dem activist and long-standing contributor to PB, was one of the hundreds of his party’s volunteers in Eastleigh yesterday and afterwards posted a comment which fitted with what’s coming to me from other sources. He wrote…

“…..3- LD->UKIP switchers is a real problem, the anti-establishment vote has gone and is not coming back.
4 -‘There is a CON->LD swing, almost entirely down to worries about Maria Hutchings. She is pushing waverers in our direction.
4-The Tories have big posters but seem to have little ground footsoldiers. Which is more than anyone else.
5- one prediction I will make – from the weak Labour areas – is that UKIP will comfortably beat them …”

Ladbrokes and PaddyPower both have Ukip-LAB match bets where you can get longer than evens on the purples doing. There’s also a similar market on Betfair.

Mike Smithson

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