Who will win the general election? The pollsters predict
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Version 0 of 1. Earlier this month we asked Britain’s leading pollsters who they thought was winning the election. Back then, with a month to go, although most said Miliband had a slight advantage, not all agreed. However, now with less than two weeks to the election, when it comes to who will have the numbers to become prime minister, they all now believe that the Labour leader is best positioned in the polls – but in an election this close, uncertainty remains. Based on today’s figures, who, between Ed Miliband and David Cameron, do you think is in a better position with just over a month to election day? Joe Twyman, head of political and social research at YouGov: YouGov conducts polls every day and with only two weeks remaining until election day the voting intention data is still broadly where it was at both the start of the campaign and indeed the start of the year: the two main parties are neck and neck, and neither has anything like the share they need to win a majority. The election campaign has so far failed to generate much excitement for large numbers of people and instead we appear to be left, to use a football metaphor, with Labour and Conservatives grinding out a scoreless draw and now playing for penalties. However, I would suggest this may represent a risk for the Conservatives. Even if they could get 290 seats and if the Lib Dems manage 25, the existing coalition falls well short of a majority. Then what? A multi-party alliance with Ukip and the DUP? Labour, on the other hand, could start with 20 fewer seats but then achieve a majority by partnering up with their historical bedfellows the Lib Dems and the SNP – even though they have ruled out a formal coalition with the latter. Of course it may very well be more complicated than that, but if the Conservatives continue to play for penalties, they might discover they’re up against the Germans. And Ed Miliband could end up in Downing Street. Maybe. Martin Boon, director, ICM: If we mostly flat-lining pollsters are to believed, this is one hell of a becalmed campaign, and I’m not sure that’s likely to change. Given low expectations of Ed Miliband at the outset, I’d say he is the one who should be most pleased with himself, and a neck and neck vote share outcome will probably work in his favour when it comes to the seats shakeup. Ben Page, chief executive of Ipsos Mori: Ed Miliband has made the most progress in the last week in personal terms, and the Labour party has edged ahead by a whisker in the national poll of polls. The maths of votes to seats benefits Labour most too. However David Cameron can still rationally hope for a late swing and an incumbency effect to get him over the line in an incredibly close race to most seats in the House of Commons. Andrew Hawkins, chairman of ComRes: All the political cross-dressing in this election (Ed Miliband channelling Nigel Farage on defence, David Cameron parroting Labour on the NHS) is simply producing a queasy stalemate with the two main parties mired in polling limbo. Labour are marginally better placed because they will likely have the choice of two parties with which to govern. The Conservatives’ fortunes, and those of Cameron, depend on only one realistic possible outcome: having enough seats between them and the Liberal Democrats, and even then they will hope Nick Clegg can scrape through to keep his job in Sheffield Hallam. Michelle Harrison, global head of public affairs at TNS: Two weeks out, more reasons to be cheerful for Labour (just). If you’d told Labour pre-campaign that Miliband’s personal ratings would be improving, and they would be broadly at parity with the Tories in the polls at this stage, then Labour would be quietly confident given that the electoral maths historically has favoured them. But then there’s Sturgeon and the SNP, who continue to go from strength to strength. Which creates an almighty headache for Labour, undercutting ambitions to make significant gains, and providing the Tories with their most potent line of attack so far. For the Conservatives, David Cameron is still grappling with a campaign that hasn’t come alive and a Ukip headache which whilst not as bad as feared, still looks set to cause damage. The outcome hinges on the crucial marginals and what ultimately wins through – safety first (for the Tories) or Labour’s “get out the vote” ground-war campaign? Adam Drummond, Opinium: I think we’re still broadly where we were at the start of the campaign with the big two still in margin of error territory and Ed Miliband slightly better placed in the hung parliament than David Cameron because of the disposition of the minor parties. The most likely option still appears to be a minority Labour government supported by the SNP and other smaller parties, but it’s an open question whether Labour or the Conservatives will have more seats or what their respective vote shares will be. In our polls we’ve shown the Conservatives slightly ahead (fuelled by a drop in Labour support among floating voters) which might be margin of error or might be evidence that the Conservative focus on Labour and the SNP is cutting through. My working assumption at the moment is a Conservative win on vote share but this election has a looser relationship between national vote share and seats than we’ve seen for years. Even if the Conservatives do win more seats, they would have to do so by such a margin to be able to govern that the sort of narrow lead we’re seeing now wouldn’t change the underlying calculation. Laurence Stellings, an associate director at Populus: Neither. As I noted last time, the Conservatives have (slowly) closed the gap with Labour, and either could yet end up winning the more seats on 7 May, but unusually that doesn’t tell us who will be the next prime minister. It would be very surprising if either Ed Miliband or David Cameron secure a majority, and in the days after election day both face a time-pressured and difficult set of negotiations to put together some type of coalition or confidence-and-supply arrangement. But by virtue of having more potential partners, Ed Miliband stands a better chance than David Cameron of being the next prime minister. Damian Lyons Lowe, founder and chief executive, Survation: Ed Miliband. He is no longer a drag on the Labour party. He is now neither helping nor hindering his party. The campaign has also unpicked Lynton Crosby’s [the Conservatives’ election campaign chief] strategy – only one in 10 voters say that party leader is a critical factor in choosing who to vote for. The Conservatives may well end up with the most votes and seats, especially if Ukip’s vote softens in those seats where the party is fielding candidates but focusing less of its campaigning efforts, and where one in three Ukip voters could be squeezed. However, the Tories would need a substantial lead in the polls because the electoral boundaries favour Labour. |