Conservatives may lose seats at election
A new poll suggests the Conservatives will perform poorly at the next election, possibly even worse than in the last two elections.
Going on the responses of 1,500 voters in 202 marginal seats, pollsters extrapolated that the Blair administration is on course to win a 160-seat majority at the next election.
The latest poll also suggests that Labour have strengthened their position since last June, when a poll in the same constituencies predicted 45 gains for the Conservatives, which would have given Labour a curtailed majority of 107.
The Populus poll for the News of the World now suggests that the Conservatives may lose three seats to the Liberal Democrats at the next election, expected on 5 May.
Virginia Bottomley in South West Surrey, Adrian Flook in Taunton and John Horam in Orpington may lose their seats to Charles Kennedy’s party.
According to the poll, Labour leads by 46 per cent in marginal seats where the Conservatives are second.
The Tories are down four per cent in those seats, on 32 per cent, with the Lib Dems up by the same figure to 16 per cent.
In Labour seats where the Lib Dems are second, Mr Blair’s party is up one per cent, on 42 per cent, while Mr Kennedy’s party is down three per cent, on 29 per cent.
Despite the Conservatives being up three per cent in these seats, the difference is not enough to win them seats.
Where Labour is in third place, the party has boosted support by seven per cent to 23 per cent.
The Tories meanwhile are down five points to 36 per cent, with the Lib Dems down three to 37 per cent.
Although nearly six out of ten respondents said the apparent bickering between Mr Blair’s and Gordon Brown’s advisers had damaged the reputation of the Labour government, nearly eight of ten said the disagreement would not change their voting intentions.
And six out of ten anticipated that Mr Blair and Mr Brown would continue to collaborate in a third term of office; 38 per cent took the opposite view.
Should the poll mirror concrete election outcomes, the Conservatives under Michael Howard may return 163 MPs to the Commons, two down on the number achieved in Labour’s landslide victory in 1997.
Populus undertook the poll between 10 – 13 January.
