I do hope you’re referring to Mr McWhirter with his Record Breakers hat on rather than his Freedom Association one!

I agree with you that almost anything’s possible, but I don’t agree with most of your reasoning. As has been pointed out, the Tories are utterly dominant in local elections at the moment. I don’t know the details of the by-elections this year, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those Tory losses were in wards where the fact that there was a Tory councillor in the first place would have had my jaw on the floor. Here in Plymouth we had Tories elected in wards which are out-and-out council estate, working class bastions. If some of those were to be lost in future by-elections I wouldn’t take it to mean that the Tories were on the back foot.

As for the Cable-Osborne-Darling comparisons, I think there is some politicking going on all round with the assessments of these individuals. Cable certainly has a “manner” about him but he also has an odd voice and is a bit Norris McWhirterish. I can see him getting on people’s nerves if he was overexposed. Osborne is a bit young to be a chancellor, and he is a little exposed on the ethical front due to expenses and yachts, but too much is made of his wealth, social class and education. A rich Oxbridge graduate with a public school background can be a perfectly good chancellor, as has been demonstrated many times. And Darling is actually one of the more honest, solid Labour frontbenchers. His problems arise more from Gordon Brown’s interference and constraints on him rather than his own flaws.

If the recession does bottom out and the economic situation starts to improve and people also twig that just as many Conservative MPs as Labour MPs were implicated in the expenses scandal, then the gap between Labour and Conservative will start to shrink. If the Lib Dems maintain their slow but steady rise and gain any momentum during the campaign, we should be into hung parliament territory.

But the key will be if Labour can get its vote out; I suspect Labour voters may have less motivation to turn out and a low turnout will benefit the Conservatives. Most new voters I’ve spoken to seem fairly uninterested, though most of those who are committed seem to be students and hence many support the Lib Dem stance on tuition fees. The rest seem fairly evenly split between the other two parties, but there is a worrying trend to voting BNP purely as a protest amongst those who don’t know their policies.

It’s all still to play for. I’m sure Labour can’t win, but I’m not certain the Conservatives can get an overall majority, though they will certainly be the biggest party.

What is different however is Brown was not PM,Election winning machine Blair was.

The truth is however,Brown was not popular as PM in the good times,he isn’r going to be popular now.

I’ve looked at it in depth here – http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/1880. There is sadly no good way of predicting general election support from local by-elections.

I can’t see it going the other way at the moment.

Despite their being “real” votes, as you put it, the Tories have been hammering Labour in real elections for the best part of a decade now, yet they lost the GEs in 2001 and 2005.

UKIP did almost as well last time in the European elections as they did this time, and yet the 2005 GE was devoid of a single UKIP MP.

The point is, they may be real elections, but they are far worse indicators of the GE result than polls, and even polls have, historically, underestimated the Tory vote, even into 2005 although the difference was reduced.

Now times are different; will there be a new type: the “shy Labour” voter? Will, conversely, there be an upshot of “shy new Tories” who’d not want to admit that they’ll be voting Tory for the first time?

Defender
Winner ________________________________________
| Con Lab LDem SNP Plaid Other Total won
Con 72 1 1 – – 1 75 (-15)
Lab 7 25 1 2 – – 35 (+1)
LD 7 6 28 – – 2 43 (+12)
SNP – 1 – 2 – – 3 (-1)
Plaid – – – – 1 – 1 (+0)
Other 4 1 1 – – 6 12 (+3)
Total 90 34 31 4 1 9 169

I think that tells a very different tale, Philip JW. These are based on REAL voting in 169 REAL elections, not polls. It shows the Conservatives are doing rather worse in real life than in the polls. Cameron is not the panacea you like to think and the Conservatives will NOT break 40%. (I say this as an ex-Conservative voter).