Politics

The omens for turnout at the election remain poor. The figures from our latest poll for the Times, put into context by the corresponding figures from 1997, are in the table below.

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.

Election Digest

MORI poll for The Economist

MORI's second weekly election campaign poll for The times

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).

Election Digest

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.