Our latest daily polling figures (fieldwork 4th-5th March for the Sunday Times) are:
- Conservative 38%
- Labour 33%
- Liberal Democrat 17%
- Others 12%
Since the middle of February, our daily tracker has been showing the parties largely static in the polls, with the Conservative lead remaining within one point of 6 (with the exception of the one, much publicised, poll showing a lead of only 2 points, which in hindsight looks like a blip).
The normal method of translating poll figures into election results is a uniform swing (swing is the average movement from one party to another, so if Labour are down 3 and the Conservatives up 5 since the election, the swing would be 4%). If the swing from Labour to the Conservatives was the same across the country then a 6 point lead (a 4.5% swing) would result in a hung Parliament, with Labour and the Conservatives on almost equal numbers of seats.
However, in practice the results would probably be somewhat better for the Conservatives. We conducted a poll of marginal seats for Channel 4 last week, which found a 6.5% swing from Labour to the Conservatives in the marginal seats that will decide the election – this would be enough to leave the Conservatives just short of an overall majority, and probably lead to a minority Conservative government.
