LONDON (MNI) – All bar one of the latest batch of polls show the
Liberal Democrats maintaining the sharply higher level of support
generated in the wake of the April 15 televised party leaders debate.

There were five polls out overnight Tuesday, with four putting
Liberal Democrat support in a 30% to 34% range. A ComRes poll
produced the lowest result for the Liberals, giving them 26%. But even
the latter is well up on levels seen before the debate.

A poll completed just seven days ago, before the leaders debate,
put the Liberal Democrats support at 18% of the vote. All polls showed
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg was reckoned to have won the debate,
and our 10 poll average now shows Liberal Democrat support up at 30.2.

Most polls show the former duopoly parties, Conservative and
Labour, losing substantial amounts of support to the Liberal Democrats.
On the ComRes poll, however, Conservative support was back up close to
its pre-leaders debate level, with Liberal Democrat support coming
primarily at the expense of Labour.

All the latest polls suggest no single party would achieve an
outright parliamentary majority.

With the UK’s “first past the post”, locally based, electoral
system there is no truly reliable way to translate national polls into
electoral outcomes.

However, at the outset of the election campaign, most analysts had
been assuming the Conservatives would need a lead over the ruling Labour
Party of something approaching 10 percentage points to be confident of
securing a parliamentary majority. The Liberal Democrat surge, however,
has made this ready reckoner even less reliable.

The following table shows the most recent polls, with the right
hand column showing the Conservatives’ average lead over Labour.

Polls: Table

End !Pollster!Media !Labour! Conservative!Liberal !Conservative!
Date of! !Outlet ! ! !Democrat!Lead Over !
Survey ! ! ! ! ! !Labour !
————————————————————————
20-Apr Angus R PoliticalB 23 32 33 9
20-Apr ComRes ITN 26 35 26 9
20-Apr Harris Metro 26 31 30 5
20-Apr YouGov Sun 26 31 34 5
20-Apr Populus Times 28 32 31 4
19-Apr Angus R. PoliticalB. 24 32 32 8
19-Apr Opinium Express 26 32 29 6
18-Apr ComRes ITV 28 32 28 4
18-Apr ICM Guardian 28 33 30 5
17-Apr YouGov Sunday Times 30 33 29 3
17-Apr BPIX Mail Sunday 28 31 32 3
17-Apr ComRes Independent 27 31 29 4
16-Apr YouGov Sun 28 33 30 5
15-Apr ICM Sunday Tel 29 34 27 5
15-Apr YouGov Sun 31 37 22 6
14-Apr YouGov Sun 32 41 18 9
13-Apr Harris Metro 27 36 23 9
13-Apr ComRes ITV 29 35 21 6

————————————————————————
10 poll average 26.5 32.3 30.2 5.8
————————————————————————

–London newsroom: 4420 7862 7491 email:ukeditorial@marketnews.com

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