Johnson’s polling mirrors that of May’s in 2017. No wonder the Conservative message is to warn against complacency

A week to go before the election and the Conservative vote appears to have peaked. The party’s share hit 42% about a fortnight ago and has not advanced since – a level that is intriguingly similar to the 42.34% result achieved by Theresa May in the last general election.

The party now dominates the leave vote – with a 69% share according to ICM’s analysis published this week – following the effective surrender of Nigel Farage in the early part of the campaign. Essentially, the Conservatives’ five-point improvement during the campaign has been almost entirely at the Brexit party’s expense.

Interestingly, it is during this peak Tory period that YouGov carried out the fieldwork (20 to 26 November) for the most high-profile poll of the campaign – the MRP survey that models a result from every constituency – which forecast a Tory majority of 68, with Labour losing a string of seats in leave areas.

No wonder then that the Conservative message from that point has been to warn against complacency – “things are MUCH tighter than they seem” Dominic Cummings wrote – with memories of Labour’s late recovery in 2017 lingering in the minds of party insiders.

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Their fears appear to have been partially justified as the last two weeks has seen Labour gradually squeeze the Liberal Democrat vote, a process that began after Jo Swinson’s appearance on Question Time on 22 November – where the hostility from the studio audience was unexpectedly pronounced – and continued as Boris Johnson’s poll lead lengthened the following week.

As a result, since then Labour has picked up nearly three points in the averages from 29.5% to 32.3%, mostly from the Lib Dems, and the overall Conservative poll lead is back down to 10 points from a 13-point peak.

It is a noticeable shift, but in another sense it changes nothing: wind back to the start of the election campaign, in late October, and the Conservative poll lead was … you can probably guess: 10 points. So, on the face of it, two squeezes in, and nothing much has changed.

Well, not quite. The fall in the Lib Dem vote, from 18% at the start of the campaign to 13% now, helps Labour in particular and the opposition parties overall, as the remain vote is less split in constituencies where third-party support was a factor.

The effect on the Commons arithmetic could leave the Conservatives with a majority of 28 on the Electoral Calculus Model. Compare that with the start of the campaign, when the same forecaster was predicting a Tory majority of 76.

Can Labour go further? The obvious place to start is with the Lib Dems. But it will be challenging for Labour to erode Lib Dem support by the 3 to 4 points it needs to even have a chance of depriving Johnson of an overall majority, not least because the Lib Dems’ clear anti-Brexit position appears to have boosted their core vote.

Labour really needs to seize votes and seats from the Conservatives, although the momentum is, if anything, the other way. In Scotland, where the party had feared a wipeout, a YouGov poll this week has the Tories losing just five of its 13 seats. Even in London, where Labour is improving, the party could still gain Kensington and Battersea from Labour, because the remain vote is split with the Lib Dems.

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Meanwhile, Labour continues to struggle for credibility among leave supporters. And, if anything, Labour has become pinned down defending its leave seats rather than going on the attack: there are a dozen seats where Labour has a majority of under 2,000 votes and which voted 55% or more for leave – from Dudley North to Ipswich.

All of which sets up a nervy final stretch for Johnson. The Tories have a little more that they need to do which is why, exhibiting uncharacteristic discipline, the party leader keeps trying to hammer home the “Get Brexit Done” message, while avoiding his most obvious point of danger: an interview with Andrew Neil.

Remember that under Theresa May, the Conservatives came so close in 2017. The party was nine seats from an overall majority and Labour only 2.35 points behind. At the moment Labour is 10 points down and the Tory poll share shows no signs of slipping. To stop Johnson walking into Downing Street, something needs to shift soon.