This is the tightest and most unpredictable election for decades. So, over the course of the campaign, the opinion polls will be monitored even more obsessively than usual. My advice is to have a big bag of salt to hand when hearing reports about daily fluctuations. Forget the twitches; look for a trend.
Taking an overview of the movements in public opinion over the last five years, we can divide them into five phases. The significant change in act one was the rapid decline in support for the Lib Dems as they ceased to be a party of protest and became a party of power. From a vote share of 23% at the 2010 election, Nick Clegg’s party slid down to the low teens by that autumn, and subsequently plumbed even inkier depths, as leftish voters reacted negatively to their partnership with the Tories. It bore out Angela Merkel’s remark to David Cameron about coalitions: “The little party always gets smashed!” The major beneficiary of Lib Dem decline was Labour. While their coalition partners were being hammered, the Tory vote held up better than many of them expected. In the council elections in the spring of 2011, the Tories performed well for a government imposing spending cuts and presiding over a stagnant economy.
It was the Tories’ turn to take a tumble in the second act. Voters began to lose patience with the absence of the promised recovery and discontent was brought to a head by George Osborne’s omnishambles budget when he thought it a smart idea to cut taxes for the wealthiest while slapping new imposts on hot pasties. Why did 20,000 people boo the chancellor at the Paralympics? Because that was the maximum capacity of the stadium. Labour started to poll consistently above 40% and regularly registered double-digit leads over the Tories.
Things turned blacker for the Conservatives in the third act of this parliament. A spectre began to stalk No 10 and his name was Nigel Farage. The rise of Ukip, fuelled by its harvesting of anger and alienation among the “left behind”, took support from all parties, but the biggest damage was done to the Conservatives. Ukip topped the poll in the Euro-elections in June 2014. Tory hopes that the Farage balloon would then deflate were confounded when two Conservative MPs defected to his gang and triggered byelections, which they won in their new rhubarb and custard colours. Some Labour MPs were cheered, believing that this was a civil war on the right which would smooth Ed Miliband’s path to No 10.
Then came act four and Labour’s turn to panic. Something almost wholly unanticipated followed the referendum on Scottish independence in September 2014. Impassioned rather than crushed by defeat, yes voters surged behind the SNP while the pro-union vote fragmented. At first no one, not even the Nationalists, really believed polling indicating that the SNP, which won only six Westminster seats in 2010, could be on course to take up to 50 in 2015, the bulk of them from Labour. Yet as poll after poll has confirmed the tidal wave to the SNP, Labour now has to contemplate losing seats that once looked as safe as castles. It has made it a whole lot harder to see a Labour path to a parliamentary majority.
In the rest of Britain, and just as some Labour MPs always feared, the lead over the Tories established during the coalition’s mid-term gradually shrank as time ticked down to the moment of national decision. In act five it disappeared. Labour’s consolation is that their decline has not been matched by a commensurate rise in support for Cameron’s party. Tories are becoming haunted by the fear that this could be a “voteless recovery”. They are increasingly perplexed and anxious that good economic news is not translating into much lift to their poll rating. As the election campaign proper begins, averages of all the polls have the two parties in a dead heat.
Will there be a sixth act in which one of them manages to break the stalemate between now and polling day? The Tories, like the psephological models that try to predict the outcome, assume that there will be a swing to the incumbents as more voters focus on the choice and undecideds break in the direction of the Conservatives. And it is true that, historically, there has usually been some movement back to the status quo before the nation casts its ballots.
Against that, polling in the marginal seats where this election will be decided is more optimistic for Labour than it is for the Tories. The Lib Dems have not found a way to reverse their dismal position in the headline polls, but they are banking on the incumbency factor to save more MPs than the headline ratings imply. If they do, this will make it yet harder for either of the biggest two to get to the 326 seats required for a parliamentary majority.
Unless someone can find a way to make the breakthrough that has eluded both the Tories and Labour so far, everything continues to point to a hung parliament – a well-hung parliament.
