If there is another polling failure Theresa May can argue she didn’t blow a 25% lead against Corbyn because such a lead never existed.

Looking at that chart above, it makes for unpleasant reading if you’re a Tory. Pretty much with every pollster that has consistently polled during this election campaign, the  Tory lead has shrunk a lot.

Success equals performance minus anticipation. At the start of the campaign the polls indicated Labour were in for such a shellacking that the Tories were looking at a majority of over 200, but now we’re getting polls showing the Tory majority being smaller than the 12 Mrs May inherited, or wiped out entirely.

Whilst most of the reduction in the Tory lead is mostly down to Labour increasing their share of the vote, it reflects poorly on Mrs May and the Tory campaign that they’ve managed to oversee the a rise in Labour’s share of the vote with a Labour leader with such a rich backstory as Jeremy Corbyn.

Looking from the outside it appears Mrs May and CCHQ decided to cede as much airtime as possible to Corbyn in this campaign in the expectation he would screw up and haemorrhage votes to the Tories. This error could be the difference between a tepid majority and a landslide majority.

Winning general elections, it is said, are a lot like orgies, you’re never quite sure who to thank afterwards, but if Theresa May wins in line with the smaller leads of YouGov or Ipsos MORI then she and the Tory party will know who, and who alone to thank for such a poor result.

Such a poor result is likely to see Mrs May forced out by the Tory party during the next Parliament, as she will be the woman who blew a 25% lead against Corbyn, that’s why she needs a polling industry failure.

TSE