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March 16th, 2010

State of the Race 16 March

5 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Blog Admin

March 16th, 2010

State of the Race 16 March

5 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Posted by Chris Gilson

Latest Poll Information for 16 March

PartyBBC Poll TrackingLSE Poll Tracking
Per centPer cent
Last Change15 March16 March
Labour3131
Conservatives4038
Liberal Democrats2020
Other Parties911

The gap widens in both our poll tracking measures today, with our median smoothed measure dropping one point for labour to 31 per cent, and giving a significant gain to the Lib Dems, from 17 per cent to 20 per cent. This comes at the expense of the ‘other’ parties. This drop is not altogether an unexpected one, given that we discussed last week that levels of support for these parties were at relatively high levels compared to previous elections.

The BBC has taken yesterday’s Guardian/ICM poll as its measure, which also shows a widening gap, of 9 per cent, between Labour and the Tories. This, in combination with the recent Opinium poll, which put the gap at 11 per cent could indicate a reversal of recent polling trends which put the Tory lead at only 4-5 per cent. The news today that the European Commission is preparing to release a report which criticises the Government’s defecit reductions strategy as not being ‘ambitious’ enough could further hurt Labour in upcoming polls.

Seat Projections

Electoral Calculus has updated its figures once again, with 303 seats predicted for the Conservatives, 264 for Labour and 50 for the Liberal Democrats, which is a fall of 12 seats for the Conservatives and a rise of 12 for Labour. The Liberal Democrats remain on 50 seats. UK Polling Report is perhaps more reflective of recent polling developments, with the Conservatives on 298 seats (28 short of a majority, but 9 higher than on the 8th of March), and Labour down 10 seats to 276 seats. The Liberal Democrats take 46 seats in that measure, which is enough to make them very important in what would be a hung parliament.

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