Labour and Tories will win the same number of seats, says top pollster

Most political commentators seem to be hedging their bets a little with their predictions for next year’s election, but none have gone quite so far as respected pollster Peter Kellner (President of YouGov) who reckons that Labour and the Tories will win exactly the same number of seats.

In the new copy of Prospect, Kellner raises no eyebrows when he says: “My own current guess is that both Labour and the Conservatives will fall short of outright victory.”

Neither is it unusual to forecast the Lib Dems holding enough seats to hold the balance of power – in this case, 35 MPs.

However, projecting a Parliament with both Labour and Tories having exactly 294 MPs in the Commons is pretty much unheard of. With 326 MPs needed for a Commons majority, the Lib Dems could join either party to form a coalition government. The outcome would leave 27 MPs from smaller parties, just shy of what would be required for a “rainbow coalition”.

Nick Clegg has repeatedly said that the Lib Dems would join the party that had performed better to form a coalition next year, so it is unclear what would happen if Kellner’s predictions came to pass. The likelihood is that the Conservatives would have won more votes, but the way the votes are spread leaves Labour with a slight electoral advantage.

Conor Pope noted yesterday that the fall in Tory and Lib Dem voteshare has not been matched by a similar increase in Labour support in important marginal seats, with UKIP being the main benefactors. Kellner agrees that the success or failures of the smaller parties will be key to the outcome of the election:

“What is certain is that Labour and Conservative fortunes will depend at least as much on what happens to UKIP, Lib Dem and possibly SNP support as on the traditional two-way battle.”