New Lord Ashcroft marginal polls
Lord Ashcroft has released a good selection of new constituency polls, covering some interesting constituencies. Full details are here.
The least intersting is probably High Peak - a largely run of the mill Con -v- Lab marginal. Ashcroft previously polled it in February, finding a wafer thin one point Labour lead. In the second survey the Tories are now ahead by 2 points, but the changes are within the margin of error - it still looks like a seat on a knife edge.
He then looked at two seats that were effectively three-way marginals in 2010 - Colne Valley and Bristol North West - both seats the Conservatives won with the Lib Dems in second place, but Labour an extremely close third. In both seats the Lib Dems have collapsed completely and they are now Con -v- Lab marginals, in Bristol North West the Conservatives have a healthy nine point lead, in Colne Valley it is again on a knife-edge, with the Tories just two points ahead.
Moving on Lord Ashcroft polled Bristol West. This is one of the few Lib Dem seats we haven't had a constituency poll of yet, but more interestingly it is one of the Green party's main target seats for the election. The poll suggests they will fall well short - while it shows the Greens moving up to second place with 25% of the vote, they are far behind Labour on 38%.
Finally Lord Ashcroft polled two UKIP targets. One was Thurrock, an ultra-marginal between Labour and the Conservatives at the last election that appears to be one of UKIP's best hopes for a gain - here Ashcroft found a four point UKIP lead over Labour in second place, the Tories just a point behind. The other was Rochester and Strood, UKIP's by-election victory last year. Today's Ashcroft poll gives the Conservatives the advantage in trying to retake it - CON 36%, LAB 24%, LDEM 3%, UKIP 33%.
