The Conservatives are continuing to say that, despite what the polls say, they can still win this election. There are, they argue, still enough undecided electors whose votes they can swing; Labour's vote is big but soft.
Three weeks today the country will go to the polling booths and elect the next government. Never before has the outcome seemed so certain. So far nine polls with fieldwork taken after the announcement of the date of the general election have been published. All nine have projected seat calculations showing an increase in the Labour majority in the House of Commons over all other parties.
Today's Daily Record carries polling results from six marginal seats in Scotland, and compares the results with those that it published in the same six marginal seats last week; both polls were conducted by Scottish Opinion. All very well, except that the first poll interviewed only 744 respondents in total (an average of 124 per constituency), and today's interviewed 911 (average about 152).
Politicians and pundits alike decry that 'this election should be about the issues'. Yet personalities intrude. In the four-sided tetrahedron that drives my model of voting behaviour, 'values' count for most, as roughly 80% of the public have their mind made up before any election is called, and most of them don't change the habits of a lifetime, in the aggregate.
The answers to three questions included on the MORI survey being published in The Times tomorrow reveal a good deal about the public attitudes to the state of the parties, and go some way to explaining the cavernous gap that still exists between the parties (and which, indeed, may even have widened slightly in the last week).
With three polls now in from Scotland, we can take a brief look at the electoral scene north of the border. (Not that you would know there have been any polls in Scotland from reading the London-based newspapers.) As the first post-devolution election, it will be fascinating to see how, if at all, the existence of the Scottish Parliament affects voting patterns, turnout, and the concerns which Scottish voters raise with their candidates.
Daily it seems we are confronted, confounded and sometimes infuriated by these phone(y) polls, fax polls, phooey polls and my collective name for them, 'Voodoo Polls'.
This is the most boring election in this century/decade/since the war/lately/whatever. How many elections is it that I've been hearing that? Nine is it? Every election news editors send some tyro journo out to stir up apathy, and prove once again that this is the most boring election since the year dot.
In Saturday's Guardian Yvonne Roberts report discussed the "gender gap" in voting, arguing that women are not served well by the political system, and quoting research by Harriet Harman and Deborah Mattinson.
