Poll analysis: Thursday May 5

MORI chairman Sir Robert Worcester analyses the latest opinion poll data.

MORI's 'forecast' poll published today in the Evening Standard, our final poll of the election, has Labour on 38 per cent, the Conservatives  on 33 per cent and 23 per cent for the Liberal Democrats. These results will disappoint all three party leaders and their followers.

Labour, because they look likely to lose some 30 seats, including several ministers when the votes are counted.

Tories as their magic figure of 200 seems beyond their grasp and they look likely to be fighting their fourth leadership contest soon.

The Liberal Democrats will be dismayed, putting on only about 10 seats, far far fewer than they'd hoped and nowhere near the fantasy that some of their spokesmen were putting around earlier in the week that they hoped to take as many as 40 seats from each of the two major parties.

No fewer than seven opinion polls are published today, all suggesting a Labour majority in the House of Commons of around 100 seats, if there is a uniform swing across the country. 

The smallest lead, by NOP in the Independent, of three per cent would give Labour a majority of just under 100, the largest, Populus in the Times, while narrowing sharply from their tracker in the paper yesterday, still has the biggest projected seat tally of around 125.

Tony Blair thus will tomorrow enjoy the knowledge of another Labour landslide for any of these projections, if realised, and it is good to remember that even today thousands of British citizens are still deciding whether or not to vote, and whom to vote for (37 per cent said these past two days that although they were decided to vote, and for which party to vote for, there was still a chance that they could change their mind and vote for another party, or even not bother.  Eight per cent of voters in 1997 said they had changed their mind on for whom to vote in the final 24 hours.

Blair will however also be conscious that a majority of voters today do so with the hope that he'll be standing down within two years and not serve out his full term, and that only a bare majority of 51 per cent of his own supporters say that he should carry on beyond the end of the coming year.

For many years MORI worked with the Evening Standard, even getting the outcome precisely right in 1983, and within a point of each party’s share in two other elections. This time if MORI does get it spot on, we'll not be alone, as all seven polls have the Tories on either 32 per cent or 33 per cent, Labour on 37 per cent plus or minus one per cent, and the Liberal Democrats on 22 per cent plus or minus two per cent.

Sir Robert Worcester is founder and chairman of MORI.

Technical note

MORI interviewed a national sample of 1,628 British adults aged 18 and over by telephone between May 3 and 4, 2005. Data is weighted to match the profile of the population. MORI abides by the rules of the British Polling Council.