What chances of Farage’s party over-hauling Labour?

There’s a buzz around the UKIP campaign HQ at the moment following a private ComRes poll which seems to suggest that they could do very well – perhaps, even, over-taking Labour for second place.

I haven’t seen any figures but my understanding is that amongst those who are certain or near-certain to vote then UKIP’s share was in the 18 – 19% region.

This was still some way behind the Labour share but no past vote weighting was applied – a factor, I would argue, that would magnify the Labour position. So my assumption is that any gap could be surmountable.

There can be little doubt that a Labour third behind Farage’s anti-EU party would make Gordon Brown’s post election position even more precarious.

From a previous ComRes poll EU poll where the fieldwork finished May 17th the detailed data shows the certainty effect. Amongst those rating themselves as 10/10 on likelihood to vote it was CON 63%: LAB 53%: LD 56%: UKIP 70%: GRN 55%: BNP 70%. These are, of course, the proportions of those saying they will vote for the respective parties.

Given that this looks like being a low-turnout election then the differences here could be critical.

There’s now a SportingIndex spread market on the range of parties while William Hill has some a good range of markets.

Mike Smithson