New poll shows a Hung Parliament now a probality not a possility

A Populus poll, just out, shows that Labour has lost the support of LD voters who at the last ’97 and ’01 General Elections were prepared to switch parties to help get Tories out.

It shows that the scale of the ‘tactical vote unwind’ is at a level far bigger than anybody envisaged and means that Labour stands to lose far more seats than a calculation based on the uniform national swing would suggest.

The maths are simple – Labour had disproportionate gains in ’97 & ’01 because of tactical voting and it will have disproportionate losses when this unwinds

It strongly reinforces our CALL to SELL LABOUR in the spread betting markets which currently stands at 343 seats representing a Labour majority of 40.

The survey by the Times’s pollster, Populus, is on Thanet South – the seat that used to be held by former Tory minister,Jonathan Aitken, who has since been in prison and now wants to stand there for UKIP.

This new poll has the following with comparisons to the vote shares at the ’01 GE.
LAB 31 (-14.7) CON 30 (-11.1), LD 18 (+8.6), UKIP 16 (+14.1), OTH 5 (+2.5)

The sample size was 1001.

Although it is just one seat it’s a fair assumption that the same is happening in other similar seats. It might be that a small number of LDs have gone the Aitken way – if so then the trend might be understated.

Thus Labour drops by nearly a third and the LD share is almost twice as big as what it got ot the ’01 GE. The swing from Labour to the LDs is more than double the current national figures. As well as opening up new LD possibilities it means that many more seats could be won back by the Tories even if their vote remains static.

Clearly the Tories should be worried by the impact of such a high profile UKIP intervention but the really significant factor is how vulnerable Labour is if LD tactical votes go back home.

Labour are down nearly 15pc almost two-thirds of that going to the LDs.

This is a clear example of the tactical vote unwind that puts perhaps 40 Lab seats won in 1997 and 2001 at risk over and above the national swing

To work out the full scale you need to go back to the 1992 election results.

One thing’s for sure – there are not many other seats where Labour can rely on high profile UKIP candidates to undermine the Tories. But even with this element the poll shows Labour only holding the seat by a whisker – apparently
the two parties were just 6 people apart in the survey.

Place those LAB sell bets before the prices move – if this poll is right Labour will be hard-pressed to maintain a majority and a hung parliament becomes even more likely.