Ashcroft polls in marginal seats: the results so far

[muriel_volestrangler]

It seems to me that polls of countrywide voting intentions are becoming increasingly useless, with the important question being how will individual marginal seats change hands - losses by Lib Dems to either Labour or Tories, losses by Tories to UKIP, losses by Tories to Labour possibly amplified by UKIP votes, and losses by Labour to the SNP.

And the only decent effort to analyse this, as far as I know, comes from Lord Ashcroft's polls in marginal seats. So, for all that he's a rich Tory tax-dodging bastard, here are his results so far:

Where does this leave our overall assessment of the battleground? Regular readers will recall that the Magic Number – the difference between the number of Conservative and Labour seats in the House of Commons, and therefore the combined number of net Tory losses and net Labour gains needed for the parties to have the same number of MPs after the next election – is 46.

In the Lib Dem-held seats I have polled so far, I have found the Conservatives ahead in ten and Labour ahead in nine. However, that small advantage on the Lib Dem battleground is cancelled out by the fact that I found the Tories behind to UKIP in Thurrock. The lack of any net advantage elsewhere means the Conservatives can afford to lose no more than 23 seats to Labour if they are to remain the largest party.

Unfortunately for the Tories my constituency polls have so far found Labour ahead in 39. However, some of the margins look very slim, not just over the Tories but over UKIP. Moreover, we have not yet looked in detail at Scottish constituencies, which could potentially change the equation dramatically. My fieldwork north of the border will begin in the New Year.

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2014/12/moderate-tory-cheer-fright-labour-final-marginals-poll-2014/

I'm surprised at the Tories taking more Lib Dem seats than Labour - but maybe that indicates some Lib Dem gains were in 'natural' Tory areas that could easily go back to them, while the more left wing LD seats are still anti-Tory enough not to risk splitting their vote with Labour and end up letting a Tory in.

Those figures would leave Labour with 32 more seats than the Tories, if there were no change in Scotland. My guess is that while Labour will lose several seats there, it won't end up that much - Labour may stem their bleeding when some people decide that more Labour than Tory seats in Westminster could keep the Tories out, while still giving the SNP a fair amount of power. But I think it would be close, and a Labour majority looks unlikely.

Any thoughts?

[T_i_B]

1. I think the Lib Dems are defending more seats from the Tories then Labour

The Tories are the Lib Dems main competitors in a lot of areas. Which therefore makes the prospect of the Tories gaining seats off them much less of a surprise.

[non sociopath skin]

2. The Lib Dems will almost certainly disappear from the North East this year

Of the two seats they hold, Redcar will return to Labour, as predicted for most of this parliament and Berwick-upon-Tweed - a predominantly rural, farming area in Northumberland - to the Tories. The only reason that Alan Beith managed to hold it to Berwick for so long was that he picked up a strong anti-Tory protest vote in the more urban south of the constituency who will now return to Labour (with some, maybe, to the Greens)

The Skin