Theresa May may be 15 points ahead, but she faces a battle to woo two sides and get a huge majority
CALLING a general election is not a risk-free strategy for Theresa May.
She is 15 points ahead, on average, in the polls and some have had her higher, so we are talking about how well she wins rather than if she wins.
But she clearly wants to get a substantially greater majority.
The working majority of 12 the Tories achieved at the last election was won off the back of a seven-point lead and winning Lib Dem seats.
Winning Lib Dem seats will be a bit more difficult this time.
You have to consider, too, that not only is Northern Ireland out of the frame for creating a majority but so now is Scotland — where the SNP will sweep the board.
And a lot of the Labour seats are incredibly safe, there are perhaps 17 marginal seats with a majority less than 1,000.
Based on the last time I estimated, and even without recent polls, I would still be struggling to get a majority of much more than 100.
If the 15 per cent lead stays solid for Theresa May then fine.
But what if it turns out to be ten, nine, eight or even seven per cent?
MYSTIC TREV PREDICTS
THE Sun’s own Mystic Trev predicted a snap general election back in January.
Politics guru Trevor Kavanagh forecast: “Theresa May will win a snap election.”
He explained: “Labour is flat on its back, the Lib Dems’ recovery is slow and Ukip has gone quiet.”
Mystic Trev was also right on the 2015 General Election, Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s presidency.
If that happens their majority won’t grow much, if at all.
This is against a backdrop of Labour having a leader in whom much of the party does not have a lot of confidence.
Will the election be a re-run of the EU referendum?
To what extent will people depart from their usual party support because of their views on Brexit?
That is what Mrs May clearly has in mind, but it is slightly different in the sense that the coalition she is trying to keep together is largely made up of people who voted to leave.
She will hope to pick up votes off Ukip and what we might call reluctant Remainers.
Around one in three of her core vote is a Remainer vote and she has got to persuade them of her vision of Brexit.
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In England, some Ukip voters — there were 3.8million last time — might think their vote in 2015 achieved Brexit and so they may vote Tory.
But Ukip is still running at around ten points in the polls, they have not disappeared.
So Theresa May needs to keep her Remainers on side while also perhaps hoping to squeeze the Ukip vote.
Disillusioned Labour voters may tactically vote Lib Dem in the 45 places where Tim Farron’s party were second to the Conservatives in 2015.
They may try to stop the Tories getting too big a majority.
I think the more complicated question is to what extent will people depart from their usual party support because of their views on Brexit?
That’s not a problem for the Lib Dems or Ukip because they were both united at their different ends of the argument.
But it might be for the Tories and Labour.
— Professor Curtice is Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s top expert in psephology, the scientific analysis of elections.
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