Worcester's Weblog - Final MORI Election Poll For The Evening Standard

MORI chairman Sir Robert Worcester analyses the latest opinion poll data.

MORI's forecast of 38 per cent for Labour, 33 per cent for the Conservatives and 23 per cent for the Liberal Democrats will disappoint all three party leaders and their followers.

Labour, because they look likely to lose some thirty seats, including several ministers when the votes are counted.

Tories, as their magic figure of 200 seems beyond their grasp, and they look likely to be fighting their fourth leadership contest soon.

The Liberal Democrats will be dismayed putting on fewer than ten seats, far far fewer than they'd hoped, and nowhere near the fantasy that some of their spokesmen were putting around earlier in the week that they looked to take as many as forty seats from each of the two major parties.

No fewer than seven opinion polls are published today, all suggesting a Labour majority in the House of Commons of at least 100 seats, if a uniform swing across the country. The smallest lead, by NOP in the Independent, of 3 per cent would give Labour a majority of just under 100, the largest, Populus in the Times, while narrowing sharply from their tracker in the paper yesterday, still has the biggest projected seat tally, of around 125.

Blair thus will tomorrow enjoy the knowledge of another Labour landslide, for any of these projections, if realised and it is good to remember that even today thousands of British citizens are still deciding whether or not to vote, and whom to vote for (37 per cent said these past two days that although they were decided to vote, and for which party to vote for, there was still a chance that they could change their mind and vote for another party, or even not bother. Eight per cent of voters in 1997 said they had changed their mind on for whom to vote in the final 24 hours.

Blair will however also be conscious that a majority of voters today do so with the hope that he'll be standing down within two years and not serve out his full term, and that only a bare majority of 51 per cent of his own supporters say that he should carry on beyond the end of the coming year.

For many years MORI worked with the Evening Standard, even getting the outcome precisely right in 1983, and within a point of each party's share in two other elections. This time if MORI does get it spot on, they'll not be alone, as all seven have the Tories on either 32 per cent or 33 per cent, Labour on 37 per cent plus or minus one per cent, and the Liberal Democrats on 22 per cent plus or minus two per cent.

Technical Details

MORI interviewed a national sample of 1,628 British adults aged 18+ by telephone between 3 and 4 May 2005. Data are weighted to match the profile of the population. MORI abides by the rules of the British Polling Council.