The big picture is that Labour still has a majority winning lead and the Tories have yet to find the magic bullet
Only EdM’s personal ratings should give LAB cause for concern
It’s parliamentary recess time. The 2012-2013 political season is over only to return in early September and then into the conference season which for whatever reason kicks off a week earlier than usual.
The final days have been accopmanied by a concentration of polling on a level that we usually only see at general election time. I’ve updated my current polling chart to feature all of them.
The most signifcant feature, as the chart shows, is the very consistent series of numbers that we are getting for Labour. In spite of all the attacks of recent days and weeks the red team’s position is staying pretty solid.It is polling across the board in a range of 36-40% levels.
- An indication of the massive challenge facing David Cameron is that even if the July ICM poll was replicated at GE2015 the uniform national swing projection sees Labour on 321 seats – just five short of the theoretical threshold of 326 required for an overall majority.
The electoral fundementals remain. Labour can achieve a majority on a much smaller national vote share than the Tories
The one big ray of hope for the Tories is the way Ed Miliband is polling. His ratings in the regular surveys suggest that he’s moved a step backwards. This was one of the charts from yesterday’s Ipsos-MORI poll.
EdM moves into a negative position amongst LAB supporters in the Ipsos-MORI leader satisfaction ratings pic.twitter.com/uxIwYObJJH
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 17, 2013
The general theory is that leader ratings like this are a good electoral pointer. The only exception in modern times was Edward Heath’s stunning victory in 1970 when he was miles behind Wilson in the satisfied/dissatisfied ratings yet went on to win a working majority.
It is perhaps for this reason that the big GE2015 betting move in the past couple of weeks is for no overall majority to move back into the favourite slot.
No overall majority now the Betfair favourite outcome for GE2015 See pic.twitter.com/qECivvD4iU
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 18, 2013
All of this points to the Tories not yet finding the magic bullet that could bring them what they so want – an overall majority.
Mike Smithson
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