Going Nowhere Fast

Oh, opinion polls. How incredibly erratic you are. YouGov have the Lib Dems slip-sliding away on 24%: ComRes have them on 26%. And yet, this is somehow not the news that Conservatives would wish to hear.

Because, you see, in both cases, the Conservative support has shuddered to a halt. No change from yesterday whatsoever. YouGov has them on 35%: ComRes has them on 37%. And in the case of YouGov, it gets worse, because Labour have taken the advantage and moved up to 30%. If that result happens across the board, Labour will be the largest party.

In any case, with less than 48 hours to go until the polling stations close, the result remains the same. There has not been an opinon poll backing a majority government since before the election was called, and when it was, they were on 39%. Only one more day of opinion polls is left, and if the Conservatives are to break through the 40% barrier, something needs to happen, and fast.

But to hope and pray on opinion polls in elections like these is a thankless task: the result is not cut-and-dry, uniform swing is horrendously inaccurate. It could be that the Lib Dems do indeed get 24% on average, yet manage to do substantially better in seats where the Conservatives are the main target. It could also be that, due most polls have a 3% margin of error, that the Conservatives get 34%, Labour get 31%, and the Lib Dems get 25%.

The Telegraph, in a fit of panic, has suggested that a deal with parties in Northern Ireland will be enough. Like it was for Ted Heath in 1974, you mean? The fact that even the most Conservative newspaper in the land is talking about post-election deals highlights the fact that Cameron's majority is at best unlikely, at worst impossible. It seems the most he can hope for is about 300 seats: a significant gain, but not quite enough.

The Lib Dems, meanwhile, do not have too much to fear from the YouGov poll. They would, of course, like to come first in the popular vote, and certainly not third: but if Labour become the largest party, the chances are they will do a deal with the Lib Dems for the sake of stability. If so, then Cameron will be sunk: the public will have spoken, the chaos of a hung parliament will be non-existent, and he will have fought for almost nothing.

In fact, a pact with other parties will almost certainly end disastrously for the Conservatives: mainly because they don't do deals, preferring to work alone. This is all well and good if you have a commanding majority, but the chances of Cameron getting more than 340 seats is pretty remote. Television has done the damage, and the press are reeling from it.

Unless the polls are even more inaccurate than I give them credit for, we're either in hung parliament territory, or 1992 territory, when the incumbent Prime Minister stayed Prime Minister. Either way, the Leader of the Opposition will not be best pleased.

Still, at least he got to Northern Ireland. Volcano 1, Cameron 1...

The Evening Stanners