The latest YouGov / Channel 4 News poll contains both good news and bad news for David Cameron.
The good news is that the swing from Labour to Conservative is higher in the key Labour marginals than in the rest of Britain. The bad news is that the swing is lower than in previous polls in this series – and would probably leave the Tories just short of an overall majority in the new House of Commons.
As before, YouGov questioned people in the 60 Labour-Conservative marginals in those seats that Labour won by a margin of between 6 and 14 percentage points. These are the vital seats that the Tories must win – and Labour can’t afford to lose.
In 2005, Labour enjoyed an 11-point lead overall in these seats. When we first polled them eighteen months ago, the Tories had moved into a 13-point lead. That amounted to a 12% swing to the Tories – enough to capture all the key marginals and enough extra to ensure a comfortable overall majority. Two subsequent polls that autumn and winter recorded swings of 8% and 9%.
In our latest poll, the Tory lead is down to just two points, and the swing is down to 6.5%. That is higher than the national swing – 4.5% in YouGov’s latest Britain-wide poll – but not enough to win every target seat. If we apply this swing to each Labour marginal, the Tories would win 52 out of the 60 seats. Add that to the 43 Labour super-marginals, where Labour’/s majority last time was below 6 percentage points, and the Tories would capture 95 seats overall from Labour.
That would make the Tories easily the largest party, with more than 300 seats, while Labour would struggle to reach 250. But would it be enough to give David Cameron an outright majority? The new House of Commons will contain 650 MPs. So 326 are needed for an overall majority.
Taking account of boundary changes, the Tories’ baseline figure is 210 seats – that’s the number they would have won in 2005 had the new boundaries been in operation. Add in 95 gains from Labour, and they would have 305. To secure an overall majority, they would need to gain another 21 seats from the Liberal Democrats.
With the Lib Dems national support down since the last election, and the Tories up, that looks feasible. But in the past, many Lib Dem (and previously Liberal) MPs have managed to build up a personal following that has provided them with some protection against adverse national trends. I believe the Tories would be doing well to unseat more than ten Lib Dem MPs.
What can Mr Cameron do to reclaim the big lead he enjoyed 18 months ago? One task is to improve his personal standing. In September 2008, 38% rated his performance as “good” or “excellent”. That is down to 24%. Over the same period, the number giving Mr Brown that accolade has climbed from 10% to 18%. So the massive 28-point advantage that the Tory leader enjoyed 18 months ago has shrunk to just six points.
If Mr Cameron can’t turn that round, and if the general election results are exactly in line with our poll, then the Tory leader would unquestionably become Prime Minister, but he may need to call an early second election to seek a clearer mandate from Britain’s voters.
