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Latest polls: Who's ahead today?

May2015

Poll of Polls

5-day weighted average

LAB

33.3

(-0.1)

CON

33.1

(-0.8)

UKIP

14.2

(+1.4)

LIB

8

(+0.1)

GRN

4.7

(-0.2)

Populus

Apr 23

35

(+1)

32

(0)

14

(-1)

8

(-1)

5

(+1)

YouGov

Apr 23

35

(+1)

33

(0)

13

(-1)

8

(+1)

5

(0)

Who will win? May2015 predicts a major Labour government

Our election-forecasting machine uses all the latest national and constituency polls to predict the election.

Polls as of Apr 23
  IMPLIED BY POLLS ASHCROFT SEATS OVERALL PREDICTION
Conservative 0 0 0
Labour 0 0 0
Liberal Democrat 0 0 0
UKIP 0 0 0
SNP 0 0 0
Green 0 0 0
Other 0 0 0
RESULT

Latest coverage

This is why Ed Miliband is likely to be soon to PM.
This is why Ed Miliband is likely to be soon to PM.
Harry Lambert
Featured, Features | 24th April 2015

Election 2015 polls: This is how Ed Miliband gets to 323 seats and becomes Prime Minister

Who is going to win the general election? On Sunday we suggested Ed Miliband is more likely to become PM after May 7 than David Cameron. We ran through various scenarios and argued that Cameron will struggle to cobble together 323 seats next month – the number he needs to survive a vote of no-confidence and remain in Downing Street.

When we wrote that piece Miliband and Cameron were equally favoured by the bookies to take power. Miliband is now a 4/6 favourite, and Cameron’s chances have fallen below 50 per cent; his odds are 5/4. (Election Forecast, our fellow forecasters, and the Telegraph have written follow-ups to our take, which you can find it in this week’s New Statesman.)

That piece focused on the challenge Cameron faces. This one is centered around Miliband. If we think he is the more likely PM, what is his path to 323 seats?

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By God believe in something. These things.
By God believe in something. These things.
Jonn Elledge
Featured, Issues & Ideas | 24th April 2015

Election 2015: 14 things I desperately want to hear a candidate say before this campaign ends

1) Immigration is not a problem. It has not ruined the country. It’s almost certainly not the thing that’s keeping your wages down. In fact, large chunks of the country would break if we didn’t have immigration. Maybe try and be a bit less ungrateful about all those nice people who come over here and run our health service for us, eh?

2) You can’t have low taxes and good public services. You just can’t. It’s either/or, and that’s if we’re lucky.

Yes, the state is inefficient, yes, there’s fat to trim. But if you keep demanding we cut spending, then things are going to break, and sooner or later they’ll include something you like. Either put your hand in your pocket, or quit whinging about bug-infested hospitals and that hole in the high street where they used to lend books.

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Do our police have to deal with stat-fixing chiefs, as Lester Freamon, pictured, did in The Wire?
Do our police have to deal with stat-fixing chiefs, as Lester Freamon, pictured, did in The Wire?
Harry Lambert
Issues & Ideas | 23rd April 2015

Police crime figures haven’t fallen – but that’s a good thing

“I mean the election’s fucking over, right? Who are we doing this for?”

One of the recurring themes of The Wire, the landmark 2000s-era television series on Baltimore’s drug-addled plight, is how the police fix crime statistics. “Making robberies into larcenies, making rapes disappear… you juke the stats and majors become colonels.”

Do our police fix the stats? Last summer, when this site was preparing to launch, the ONS released its latest crime figures for the UK. Those figures showed that their measure of crime – a survey-based measure that they began in the early 1980s – was reporting a significant fall in the crime rate,  while the police’s official figures were showing a negligible, 0.1 per cent fall.

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Chelsea could be the only Tory team in the Premiership when they win the league.
Chelsea could be the only Tory team in the Premiership when they win the league.
Philip Cowley
Featured, Issues & Ideas | 23rd April 2015

Election 2015: Football lays bare the great divides in British politics

One of the laws of politics is that the countryside votes Tory but the cities are led by Labour. And in no way is that better captured than by looking to football.

90 per cent of the teams in the Premier League play in seats represented by Labour MPs. Across the Premiership and Championship, 73 per cent of teams are in Labour seats. Big football clubs are in big cities, and the Conservatives aren’t. (As we move down the leagues, more teams in Tory-held towns start to appear.)

Yesterday morning, in a spare five minutes, I tweeted this, and my twitter feed went into meltdown for the rest of the day. Below, and with two minor tweaks, is an expanded version of the graphic.

Read more
A virtual battleground.
A virtual battleground.

By Charlotte Simmonds

23rd April 2015

How are the parties’ economic promises playing out on social media?

If a single topic has dominated the pre-election debate, it has surely been the economy. That the UK is working its way out of the worst recession since the 1930s is well known – what remains uncertain is how quickly, or how effectively, the next government’s policies will accelerate this process.

Much of the debate is taking place on social media. “The economy” earned its place as a top trending topic on Twitter across the last 30 days, according to ElectUK, a new app from Tata Consultancy Services which is monitoring Twitter activity during the election campaign. The economy has made up almost a third (28.4 percent) of political Twitter chatter, only narrowly taken over by “health” over the past few days.

The impact of austerity remains a key battle. Research from the LSE, among others, says that living standards have suffered to an “unprecedented” degree since the recession began. As harbingers of the cuts, the Conservatives are alive to their reputation as “the nasty party” and have used social media to push the message that they are putting Britain back on its feet, in contrast to an “economically irresponsible” Labour. This strategy has seen the party using Twitter to share stats on job creation and heavyweight endorsements from the likes of John Major.

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