Doing It Where It Counts

Mike Smithson, upon whom I generally rely for all polling information - and whose opinion almost exclusively on most things psephological do I trust, rightly points out that the latest poll of the marginals reveals that the Tories are doing more than enough to secure a comfortable majority at the GE.

The poll, by Angus Reid, puts the Conservatives on a very solid 12 point lead. Smithson concludes:

What’s critical here are not the detailed numbers so much but that it
further supports the idea that the marginals are behaving differently from
others seats.
So in the non-marginals in this poll there’s about a 7.5% swing
from Labour to the Tories - in the marginals it is 10 11%.
A big caveat is that this is not a full poll - only a pretty chunky sub-set and we’ll have to see if this is the pattern in other AR polls in the coming weeks.
But overall it does support the argument that in one form or another we’ve been
making all week

It is an important caveat, and it's just that kind of professionalism that gives Mike Smithson his deserved reputation for reliability. I have no such contraints on me, though - no one is going to lose money if I'm wrong - so I'm happy to make a prediction that the Tories will be doing this well, if not better, in all the marginals. I also think people are generally pretty coy about the fact that they intend to vote for the Conservatives at the election: Labour's agitprop and smears have been that effective for years. But vote for the Tories they will, even if they don't admit it to pollsters beforehand, and in their millions.

This marginals poll, limited though it might be, tells me one thing pretty clearly: they're going to beat Labour by a landslide!