Just over 14 months to go to GE2015 and LAB’s position remains solid in the PB YouGov weekly average

Just over 14 months to go to GE2015 and LAB’s position remains solid in the PB YouGov weekly average

It’s very hard to forecast a CON majority

Since before Christmas I’ve been maintaining an average of the four main party shares from the 5 YouGov polls that appear every week. This enables us to follow trends much better than looking at individual polls from the firm which like all surveys can sometimes be affected by sampling issues.

The big message looking at the charts above is how constant the LAB figure has been within a range over the two months of 38.4% to 39%.

The Tory share, as the top chart shows, has been much more likely to fluctuate.

    Each month that goes by with LAB maintaining its current position is a win for Ed Miliband and the closer we get to May 2015 the more worrying it is for the Tories.

We’ve discussed many times before on PB the huge challenge facing the Tories because of the way the electoral system favours Labour. My reckoning is that the blues could be 3-4% ahead in national vote share and still be behind Labour on the number of seats.

It is just possible to see a pathway to the Tories doing that. What is very difficult to forecast from where we are at the moment is a CON majority.

Mike Smithson

2004-2014: The view from OUTSIDE the Westminster bubble


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