–Adds New London Poll Results To Version Transmitted At 0954 GMT
–Alternative Analysis Suggests Heavier Labour Losses
–Conservative Government May Struggle With Tax Hikes

LONDON (MNI), April 26 – A poll for London’s Evening Standard
newspaper, published Monday, highlights the surge in Liberal Democrat
support in comparison to the start of the election campaign.

The headline figures for the metropolis are the Liberal Democrats
on 28%, up on just 16% in a London poll taken two weeks ago, while
Labour support has fallen four percentage points to 31% from 35%. The
Conservatives lead in the capital, with 36% of the vote, down 2
percentage points on a week ago.

The Evening Standard says the poll suggests the Liberal Democrats
will gain three seats from Labour and deny the Conservatives victory in
three key London target seats.

The poll adds to the evidence pointing to no party gaining overall
control in the May 6 election.

National Polls Show Slight Move Up In Conservative Support

The raft of national opinion polls over the weekend and one poll
published Monday have shown a slight strengthening in the Conservative
vote.

The polls, however, still show no party will win an overall
majority using the uniform national swing (UNS) model. The average
Conservative score in the latest 10 opinion polls is 34.3%, with the
Liberal Democrats on 28.8% and Labour on 27.6%.

Plug those numbers into any of many the UNS models available, such
as the one at the BBC, and they show no party gaining overall control.
The BBC UNS forecast is for the Conservatives to get just 7 more
parliamentary seats than Labour and to fall 57 seats short of an overall
majority.

The UNS model, however, is open to criticism – not least that some
of its assumptions are clearly illogical. If there is a national swing
away from one party of, say, 10 percentage points and they had less than
10% of the vote in the previous election, under UNS they would obtain a
negative vote.

Nate Silver, who achieved a lot of publicity in the US for his
detailed work on recent elections there, posted an article on his
fivethirtyeight.com site at the weekend saying the UNS models may
substantially understate the likely gains of the Conservatives and
Liberal Democrats.

Silver plugs in assumptions based on assigning vote shares from one
party to another on a local basis. In other words, taking the percentage
of voters defecting from, say, Labour to Conservative.

On recent poll averages, his model comes up with Labour losing
around 40 more seats than on a UNS model, with the Conservatives falling
only 20 odd seats short of an overall majority.

Further Doubts On Deficit Reduction

A detailed analysis piece in the Financial Times Monday highlights
the sheer scale of the challenge facing any future government to achieve
the minimum target set by the current Labour government of halving the
deficit over four years.

The piece, citing senior civil servants warns that the choices on
spending cuts are so tough that a future government would have to
contemplate significant tax hikes.

One possibility is a value added tax hike. Market News, however,
was told by a Conservative Party adviser that a VAT hike would be highly
problematic for a Conservative administration.

The source said there were Conservative candidates standing in
“safe” Conservative constituencies who are strongly opposed to it. These
candidates believe the UK tax burden is already too high, note the
Conservatives have made no reference to a VAT hike during this campaign
and believe deficit reduction should be through spending cuts.

This echoed comments from Conservative leader David Cameron, who
said in an interview Friday there were no Conservative plans for a hike
in VAT in any early budget and he added that deficit reduction plans
were based on spending cuts rather than increased taxation.

If the Conservatives do manage to get an overall majority in the
election on May 6 it is likely to be a very slender one. It would,
therefore, need only a few rebels to block any tax increases.

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

Polls: Table

End !Pollster!Media !Labour! Conservative!Liberal !Conservative!
Date of! !Outlet ! ! !Democrat!Lead Over !
Survey ! ! ! ! ! !Labour !
————————————————————————

25-Apr* YouGov Evening St. 31 36 28 5
25-Apr YouGov Sun 28 34 30 6
24-Apr ComRes Ind. Sunday 28 34 29 6
24-Apr BPIX Mail Sunday 26 34 30 8
24-Apr YouGov Sun. Times 27 35 28 8
23-Apr ICM Sun. Tel. 26 35 31 9
23-Apr MORI News World 30 36 23 6
23-Apr BPIX Daily Mail 26 34 29 8
23-Apr YouGov Sun 29 34 29 5
22-Apr YouGov Sun 27 33 31 6
21-Apr YouGov Sun 29 34 28 5
————————————————————————
10 poll average 27.6 34.3 28.8 6.7
————————————————————————

* = London Only

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

[TOPICS: MABDS$,M$B$$$,MT$$$$]