Neither Labour not the Conservatives can take much comfort from the public’s reaction to the disclosures about MPs’ allowances. YouGov conducted its May poll for the Sunday Times immediately before voters had a chance to react to the first of the Daily Telegraph’s stories. Since then, according to our latest Telegraph poll, the Conservatives have fallen four points to 39%, while Labour has fallen five points to 22%, The Liberal Democrats have held steady, at 18%, while other parties have jumped nine points to 21%.
Those figures relate to a hypothetical, immediate general election. But of course there won’t be one just yet. However there are elections to the European Parliament this Thursday; and here the figures are even more dramatic. Since early May, and counting only those electors who say they are certain to vote, the Tories are down ten points to 27%, Labour is down five points to 17% and the Lib Dems down four points to 15%. The gainers have been UKIP (up nine to 16%), Greens (up 5 to 9%) and BNP (up three to 7%).
On these figures, the race for second place is too close to call. Labour, UKIP and the Lib Dems are all in the range of 15-17%. Even with our large sample – more than 5,000 in all, and more than 2,000 who are certain to vote – these differences are well within sampling error.
Translating these votes into seats is not easy. The Tories, UKIP and Lib Dems all have exactly the same shares now as they achieved in the 2004 election. They should each win almost as many seats as last time (the overall number of British seats in the European Parliament is down six to 69, which is why they may not match their seat numbers five years ago.) Labour, however, is down six points, and could lose five or six of the 19 seats they won last time.
The really tricky bit is the prospects for the Greens and BNP. Last time, the Greens’ 6% won them two seats, while the BNP’s 5% won them none. It is possible the Greens will pick up another one or two seats. As for the BNP, their 7% puts them within reach of taking up to four seats. However, the voting system – party lists for each region – means that the margin between success and failure is very narrow for a party with 6-8% support. Depending on the precise region-by-region vote tally, the BNP might just fall short everywhere – or just overcome the hurdle that stands between them at representation at Strasbourg. Unless turnout drops sharply, the BNP are likely to win more than one million votes, whether or not they win any seats.
In any event, the combined Labour and Conservative vote looks very likely to fall significantly below 50%. The current division is: two main parties 44%, the rest 56%. This looks like turning into the ‘plague on both your houses’ election.
