| The state of play: Bored? You won't be |
| We're nearly there, people. There are four days to go until the general election which will define a generation. It has been six weeks of hard pounding and those of us that have covered a few of them have never been so tired for so little effect. The campaigns have played it safe, the rhetoric has been banal and the breadth of subjects depressingly limited (when were foreign affairs and education ever an irrelevance before?). No one has been punched, no one embarrassed by screaming protesters. No one has made a career-defining gaffe and no one has been overheard saying anything spectacularly disloyal. Ambitions have been low, candour about the challenges ahead still lower. In truth all that has happened is that Ed Miliband has improved his standing and the Tories have switched from attacking him to attacking his potential dependence on the SNP. All in all it has been rubbish. And yet it is important rubbish. So what's happening out there? There is some evidence of things turning the Tories' way but perhaps not yet enough to give them comfort. Today's Sunday Times YouGov poll has the Tories one point ahead, after several weekends of Labour hegemony. Opinium in the Observerhas the same margin for the Tories while ComRes in the Sindy andSunday Mirror is tied. Things are never simple though and Survation in the Mail on Sunday has Labour 3 points up. What does all this mean? Peter Kellner of YouGov, arguably Britain's top pollster, has updated his prediction of the result. It now reads:
Professor John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde, arguably Britain's leading psephologist, calls it like this in the Mail on Sunday:
Senior Tories say they expect to have at least 290 seats and to lead Labour by about 20 seats. Labour officials say they expect to be behind but believe the gap will be 5 to 10 seats. There's an interesting coda in this Labour Uncut blog, which claims Ed Miliband began wooing Russell Brand because early postal voting returns looked bad for Labour. Labour's best hope of a revival is that tactical voting by unionists in Scotland could keep the SNP seat sweep lower than the polls suggest. But despite the margin of error deadlock, there is grounds for hope for the Tories in the small print of the YouGov poll. David Cameron leads Ed Miliband as voters' preferred prime minister by 38% to 24%. That 14 point gap is double the 7% a fortnight ago as Milimania was hotting up. Cameron is judged to have won the final Question Time showdown by a margin of 42% to 26% - a bigger win than the initial snap poll suggested on the night and a hint, perhaps, that Miliband's stumble was more than symbolic. What's more, after weeks of the Labour leader's personal ratings improving they have now taken a turn for the worse. He is judged to be doing well by 35% and badly by 56%, a net score of minus 21, compared with minus 17 last week. Crucially for the Conservatives 50% of voters now say the government is managing the economy well, a mark it has not hit since June 2010. A YouGov poll for the Sun on Sunday also finds that 49% of voters now make the economy their top election issue — up 10 points since January - ahead of the NHS and immigration. That could be crucial as the parties make their final pitch for power. |
