Swinging Britain
Britain's Conservatives will need a huge swing on polling day
GORDON BROWN has called a general election for May 6th to choose Britain's next government. Opinion polls suggest that the opposition Conservative Party will win. However the party will need a huge swing on polling day to get the overall majority that would allow it to form the next government without having to rely on coalition partners (larger even than the swing it benefited from in 1979). Life is made harder for the Conservatives by the inefficient distribution of their votes. In the past three elections the Conservatives needed an average of 51,000 votes to elect an MP compared with 28,000 for Labour. The Liberal Democrats fared even worse than the Conservatives on this, needing 101,000 votes to elect an MP. The polls currently suggest that the Conservatives will not get their overall majority, however punters wagering their pounds on the betting markets say they will.
