The UK election now seems to be a genuine three way race — at least in terms of nationwide opinions polls, if not probable distribution of seats. And the big news from today is that the surge in support for the Lib Dems appears to be real and at least for the moment sustaining itself. Today’s YouGov poll actually has the Lib Dems in the lead LDEM 33%, CON 32%, LAB 26%, though other polls out today show the Conservatives still with a very marginal lead.
An interesting reality check for Americans is this seat calculator at the BBC website. You can see an estimate of the number of seats each party will get based on difference national vote distributions. If you fiddle around with it, two interesting things come out. First is that for each of the current national polls, Labour ends up with more seats than any other party, though short of 326, the number required to form a government. And that’s despite the fact that Labour is, albeit marginally, behind in the most of the polls. The second is that even if the Lib Dems win the national vote by a decent margin they still end up with dramatically fewer seats in the next Parliament than either of the national vote ‘losers’, the Tories or Labour.
