The headline figures from the latest opinion polls may be fascinating but they are a poor guide to the likely outcome of the election. For a better understanding, we need to look at what is happening in the key Lib Dem-Tory marginals.
Thankfully, PoliticalBetting’s Mike Smithson has published a subset of data from the latest Angus Reid poll which goes some way to enabling this. The figures show that in the 62 seats currently held by Nick Clegg’s party, the Lib Dems are on 44 per cent, the Tories on 23 per cent and Labour on 19 per cent.
A lead of this size suggests, as Smithson writes, that the Lib Dems will keep almost all of the seats they won in 2005. This finding correlates with one from last week’s Crosby/Textor poll for the Telegraph (carried out before Cleggmania) which found that that the Conservatives would fail to win any of the 20 key Lib Dem-Tory marginals.
It’s all bad news for David Cameron. Of the 117 seats his party needs to gain for a majority of one, 23 are currently held by the Lib Dems.
The performance of Clegg’s party is all the more impressive given the huge funding disadvantage suffered by the Lib Dems. New figures published by the Electoral Commission show that the Tories received £1.46m in donations in the first week of the campaign, with Labour receiving nearly £800,000 and the Lib Dems just £20,000.
It looks as if fears that Lord Ashcroft’s millions would scoop up the marginals for the Tories were overstated.
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