Another poll shows its getting very close

Today’s YouGov poll in the Daily Telegraph is in line with other recent polls and shows that the gap between the main parties is narrowing. The shares with comparisons from the Sunday Times YG poll five days ago are:- CON 34(+2): LAB 35(-2): LDEM 22 (-1).

Last weekend’s YG poll in the Sunday Times was taken in the immediate aftermath of Gordon Brown’s budget while the big political issue during this survey was the Tory policy on travellers.

It should be noted that unlike MORI yesterday and the big BES poll reported on Tuesday YouGov do not weight their results by whether those taking part are certain they will vote. This question was asked by YouGov but has not been a factor affecting their headline figures. We should get the detailed information on this when the pollster provides the full data set on its website.

For the Tories there will be much relief that a survey from the pollster that has traditionally reported the best figures for the party is no longer showing the five and six point deficits of the two previous surveys.

Labour will be quite worried by this latest poll because of the big drop came during a week when Tony Blair was centre stage once again – not Gordon Brown.

The Lib Dems will not be too concerned because it looks as though they will be going into the formal campaign in the low 20s.

Spread betting punters are likely to be even more attracted to Tory prices which have seen moves in the past few days.

Putting the YG vote shares into Martin Baxter’s calculator there’s is still a healthy majority for Tony Blair of 58 seats. The predicted Commons would be CON 207: LAB 352: LD 52

But that is applying the current projections to what happened four years ago. Another view of what might happen is had by working out what a uniform national swing to the 1997 figures would produce. From the Hill & Knowlton calculator, factoring in the Scottish changes, we get CON 223: LAB 324: LD 69 – an overall Commons majority of just one.

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Mike Smithson