ICM/News of the World poll shows 8% swing in marginal seats
The News of the World has a new ICM poll of marginal seats in tomorrow's paper. ICM's sample covered the 97 seats where Labour are in first place and the Conservatives in second place, and where the Conservatives need a swing between 4% and 10%. The implied assumption is that seats with a majority of less than 4% are going to be Conservative gains anyway on the current national polls and not worth looking at - instead these are the seats that span from a hung Parliament to a chunky Conservative majority.
The topline voting intention figures in these seats, with changes from the last electon, are CON 40%(+9.2), LAB 37%(-7.4), LDEM 14%(-3.8) - so a swing of 8.3% from Labour to the Conservatives. In contrast the last ICM national poll showed a national swing of 6.5%, so once again we find a slightly larger swing towards the Conservatives in the Con-Lab marginal seats they need to win. This has been pretty consistent in all polls of marginal seats in the last couple of years.
What it doesn't tell us is how well the Conservatives are doing against the Liberal Democrats in their marginal seats. On these particular figures it isn't critical - if there was a uniform swing amongst Lab vs Con marginal seats these figures would net the Tories around 124 extra seats, and added to the 214 seats they start with on the new boundaries that alone would be enough for David Cameron to win a small overall majority even if the Con vs LD battle was completely static.
However, for a healthier majority the Conservatives would also need to make some progress against the third party. There is much less evidence of what is happening in Con vs LD seats, and it is much harder to judge what it means when there is, since personal votes and tactical voting plays a larger part and we don't know for sure how to factor that in.
Going back to the ICM poll, there was scant evidence that the larger Conservative swing in marginal seats came from out-campaigning Labour or having more money to throw about. 28% of respondents recalled having received party literature, been canvassed or seen other signs of campaigning by the Conservatives, not significantly more than the 24% who recalled seeing signs of Labour campaigningin their local area.
ICM also asked whether people trust Cameron or Brown more on various issues. Cameron led decisively on modernising the NHS, cutting crime, controlling immigration and improving standards in schools and united his party. Brown led on dealing with an emergency. On transport, Afghanistan, taxation, the recession and terrorism the two leaders were almost even.
Still to come tonight
there is also a ComRes poll to come later on tonight.
