Labour and the Conservatives are heading into Thursday’s general election neck and neck, tied at 35% each according to the preliminary results of the final Guardian/ICM campaign poll.

Ed Miliband’s party has pulled back three points on the previous campaign poll, published nine days ago, with the Conservatives remaining unchanged.

Labour’s recovery goes hand in hand with a squeeze at the political fringe: Ukip and the Greens both slip back two points, to 11% and 3% respectively.

The Liberal Democrats are unchanged on 9%, a buoyant Scottish National party climbs one to a Britain-wide score of 5%. Plaid Cymru are on 1%, and other minor parties are also on 1%.

The survey is ICM’s preliminary prediction poll, with a larger than normal sample size, and will be updated on polling day, after additional interviews being conducted into Wednesday night are fed into the data.

Previous ICM surveys reported Conservative leads, ranging from six to two points.



ICM’s final survey does not only ask voters about their own voting intention for Thursday but also about their expectations as to what the rest of the country will do.

Voters’ own predictions are less favourable to Labour than the poll headlines suggest. When asked to predict the poll scores, on average, respondents expect Labour to secure only 32%, three points less than the 35% they expect for the Tories.

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When the Guardian’s poll projection, an average of all the polls made public, is updated to take account of the new ICM data it places the Conservatives on 274 seats and Labour on 271 – neither anywhere near the 326 required for an absolute majority. But the anti-Tory SNP bloc of 53 gives Miliband the stronger position in the battle to take control of No 10.

With a second hung parliament in prospect, ICM pressed voters on the government they would prefer. The single most popular choice – picked by 25% – was a Conservative overall majority, followed by a Labour majority, which 23% preferred.

A Conservative-led administration in which the Tories have to strike deals with others is the choice of 22%, while a Labour-led government that had to strike deals was picked by only 19%, a possible sign of success for the Conservative warnings about a SNP-backed “coalition of chaos” installing Miliband in Downing Street.

The public also envisages the Lib Dems outperforming most polls by achieving 14%, and Ukip underperforming somewhat, with 10%.

Martin Boon of ICM Unlimited, who pioneered this “wisdom of crowds” approach, explained: “Most people will have an inkling about how friends and relatives will vote, and in aggregate these impressions may count for more than individuals’ sometimes less-than-clear sense of their own intentions. That’s the ‘wisdom’ theory, and when we put it to the test in 2010 it proved more accurate gauge of the result than the conventional approach.”

But it is ICM’s headline prediction that has been the more intensely anticipated set of numbers, because its final survey has got closer than the rest of the polling pack to the final result in three of the last four general elections. In the raw data, Labour is actually ahead – by 37% to the Conservatives’ 33%. But this is misleading, because Labour leaners are less committed to turning out.



A strikingly high 73% of all voters now say they will definitely cast a ballot, suggesting that the closely fought fight may push turnout up above the 65% level of 2010. But turnout rises further to 85% among Conservatives, and to 79% for Labour supporters. Adjust for this differential, and Labour’s initial advantage shrinks to a single point – 35% against the Tories’ 34%.

ICM then applies its final adjustment – allocating a chunk of those voters who won’t reveal their 2015 plans back to the party they say they backed last time, something which experience suggests many of them will do.

This final tweak pulls the Conservatives up to draw level with Labour, and comes close to pushing the Tories into the lead. “These results are on such a knife edge,” explains Boon, “that assuming that just one or two extra former Conservative or Lib Dem voters will ‘go home’ on Thursday could have dragged Labour down to 34%, and given the Tories the narrowest of leads.”

For the third time during the campaign, ICM asked voters to rate the political leaders. David Cameron is seen as doing a good job by 51%, against 37% who say he is performing badly; the gap between these two numbers gives him a net positive rating of +14 points, just up on last week’s +12. Miliband’s ratings remain far worse, with a net -20, even though that is an appreciable improvement of last week’s dismal -29.

Nick Clegg is on -18, Nigel Farage on -16 and Natalie Bennett of the Greens on -6, scores which, in all three cases, have barely changed since the campaign began. Despite hostile media coverage about the SNP in England and Wales, Nicola Sturgeon retains a net positive rating of +5, albeit a smaller one than in April.

When it comes to which issues are shifting votes, there are signs of Labour setting the agenda. Asked which campaign issues had “made you stop and think about how you will cast your vote” 79% named the future of the NHS, 57% looming public expenditure cuts, and 51% squeezed living standards.

By contrast fewer voters named the main planks of the Conservative campaign: 48% for the deficit, 46% future tax rises, and 39% fears of the next government being held to ransom by smaller parties.