Squalls Can Still Upset Labour's Smooth Passage

Labour looks to be sailing in on the tide. Although this is still the most volatile election in recent political experience, many in the British electorate have yet gone nap on which party to support. A third of those who are "absolutely certain to vote" still say they might change their minds between this weekend's fieldwork and Thursday.

Labour are still odds on to win comfortably, but estimates of the majority vary widely. The different levels of expected turnout between party supporters, with a 28 per cent of intending Tory voters saying they still might switch, a third of Labour, and over four in ten of those planning to vote Liberal Democrat suggest quite a lot of switching and churning are going on below the surface -- despite some polls suggesting a stable electorate at the aggregate level. In past elections, panel studies have shown as many as 28 per cent of voters on the day were saying they would vote for a different party when their voting intentions were registered at the beginning of the election.

MORI's latest poll conducted over the weekend, with the majority of fieldwork having taken place on Saturday, shows the most dramatic shift of support for the two main parties we have measured since the election campaign was formally announced on April 5th. Among the 64 per cent of the electorate who say they are "absolutely certain to vote" on Thursday, the Conservatives are on 29 per cent (down 4 points from MORI's last poll), Labour are on 39 per cent (up 3 points) and the Liberal Democrats remain unchanged at 22 per cent, a 3.5 per cent swing from Labour to Conservatives over the week.

This shift in party support is not only explained by Labour supporters becoming firmer in their likelihood to vote -- in the MORI poll for the Observer / Sunday Mirror, the gap between the Conservatives' and Labour's certainty of voting stood at 8 points.

In this poll it is 10 points -- not a statistically significant difference.

The change in support is down to fewer people overall saying they intend to vote Conservative. When we look at all those who name a party, the Conservatives stand at 26 per cent -- just two points above the Liberal Democrats. This is the lowest level of support MORI has measured for the Conservatives since the spring of 2003. Even with more of these supporters likely to vote than among supporters of other parties, this finding will send shivers through the Conservative high command that there is the possibility of the party polling less well than they did in 2001.

Perhaps this latest poll reflects a warning shot from the public who feel angry at Michael Howard's highly personal and negative campaign against Tony Blair? Most of the switch is among those over 65, the Conservative's core voting group. It is clear that the hammer and tongs campaign will go down to the wire despite what looks to be a solid Labour victory.

While Charles Kennedy and the Liberal Democrats look set to do better on Thursday by adding ten to twenty seats to their total, Tony Blair and Michael Howard will be fighting down to the wire, Michael Howard hoping to hit the magic 200 seat mark by adding a net 34 seats to his party's 166 at the last election and to increase the Tories' 32.7% share they achieved four years ago. The Prime Minister's magic number is a 50 or even 60 seat majority to resist increased pressure to step down sooner rather than later and hold his dissident backbenchers at bay.

Those 36% of voters who say they still may change their minds, many of which may not decide right until the last 24 hours, now hold both men's fate in their hands.