Hung Parliament?

As we all know, the general election is on may 6th. I've always been told, and stick by the dictum, that political parties don't win elections. Governments lose them. And despite this election pretty much being handed to the Conservatives on a plate, they've spectacularly failed to seize the opportunity and win by a landslide.

At the moment, a hung parliament seems to be the likeliest outcome. Cameron is just ahead in the polls - UKPR gives him an average lead of 7 points.

Hung parliaments are very rare in the UK. Our last hung parliament was in 1974 (with an election called eight months later), and prior to that, 1929. If the Tories win, it's likely to be with only a slim majority of ten or so seats. In case of a hung parliament, one of two things will happen. Either multiple parties will join together to form a coalition government, and thus have a majority, or the party with most seats will try to lead a minority government.

To win the election, the Conservative Party need to gain 116 seats. And to win the seats, Cameron needs a voter swing of 6.9%, which is pretty demanding - even Margaret Thatcher only managed 5.3%. To make matters worse, with 12% of voters this year saying they'll support independent candidates or small parties (up from 8% in the last election), the Conservatives can't even be sure of the 4.3% they need to be the largest party in Parliament. 37% of voters planning to vote Labour in marginal seats say they may still change their mind, compared to 40% of prospective Conservative voters (it's an awful 77% for the Lib Dems).


Clearly a lot is going to change after the television debates. I'm really looking forward to them. The Chancellor's debates were impressive. Osbourne neatly managed to avoid actually answering any questions about cuts, Darling tried his hardest to look stern and straight to the point - but both really failed to give clear answers. Vince Cable, on the other hand, was honest about what the Lib Dems would cut, when, and by how much (clearly, we're going to have to cut spending somewhere. That's what you do when you're in debt, and that's what the country does when it's in debt. Politicians attempting to sugar coat the cuts out to just spit it out. We're not stupid, we understand).

My favourite moment of the debates (it still gives me a gleeful thrill) was when Osbourne was busily crying out about wasteful government spending, as highlighted in figures Darling released. He claimed the Conservatives could save £6 billion in efficiency savings, which would cover Labour's planned National Insurance rise. Vince Cable rounded on him with "'George, last week you went round denouncing these government-supposed efficiency savings as complete fiction...you are now using these fictional savings to finance your tax cut. That is utterly incredible.''

There's a great video of that moment on The Telegraph's site: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7536562/Chancellors-debate-Alistair-Darling-and-George-Osborne-clash-over-deficit.html

My money's on a slim Tory majority. Unfortunately.