Just A Three Point Gap
A Populus poll puts just a three-point gap between the Conservatives and Labour, with the voting shares being: CON 37% (-3): LAB 34% (+3): LD 19%(+2). This is bad, bad news for the Tories, dropping below the 40% mark and coming some close to Labour in percentage terms.
However, unlike the Times extract above from their website claims, this certainly does not show that “voters still prefer Labour as the Government”. More people want the Conservatives as the governemnt and Cameron as Prime Minister than Labour and Brown. It is just the issues with our political system and the massively disproportionate [aka anti-Tory] way the constituencies are currently set out, meaning that a 7% swing is needed for any sort of Tory majority in the Commons.
The Tories are ahead, but not by anywhere near enough. They need to push and keep pushing. Despite the adage that elections are lost by governments and not won by Oppositions, they need to set themselves out as a complete and authoritative alternative government to Labour. And soon. They are making good progress, but the progress needs to be picked up and run with.
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The polls don’t tell the whole story. Your party likes to whinge about gerrymandering and “the system” (a system you have always been so reluctant to change), giving all sorts of statistics as evidence of an inherent bias (usually with an accusation that this has all been pre-planned by the Labour Party).
Before I address the polls, I’d first like to address the common argument about Tory MPs needing more votes to get elected. There is a very simple reason for this: under FPTP, local turnout is irrelevant, i.e. it doesn’t matter if 30% of the electorate vote or 90%, winner still gets the same outcome. We all know that areas with low turnout tend to be poorer working-class areas… hence Labour requiring fewer votes to win seats.
re: the polls. Well, here you have a more intriguing point, but I think a partial explanation is offered by the phenomenon of tactical voting. Essentially, thanks to good old Maggie Thatcher, your party have consistently been the most-hated party in the country for a fair old while. In any Con/Lab or Con/LD marginal, there will be an enormous number of supporters from the party who can’t win throwing their support behind whoever can beat the Conservatives. Yes, this phenomenon is probably on the decline, but I don’t think you can underestimate its power.
The truth of the matter is that voters, as a whole, don’t have a clear party preference. The solution? Proportional representation. Why don’t the Tories support it? Because they’d never get into power. Why would they never get into power? Because the population as a whole doesn’t really want them in power. That’s democracy.