Keens Face Losing Constituencies

After poll predicts land-slide victory for Conservatives in next election

A poll published this week has predicted a land-slide victory for Conservatives in the next general election. In the largest ever survey of marginal seats, PoliticsHome.com forecast a Tory majority of 146 and envisaged that local MPs Alan and Ann Keen would lose their constituencies.

The PoliticsHome study of marginal seats, using an unprecedented sample of almost 35,000 people over 238 marginal constituencies, gives an idea of what would happen if a general election were held now. They forecast that eight cabinet ministers, as well as Mr and Mrs Keen, would be defeated by their Conservative opponents.

Using wording specially designed to factor in tactical voting and the personal vote of sitting MPs, and splitting the country into key groups of marginal seats, the poll offers the most detailed snapshot to date of British political public opinion in the marginal seats that will decide the election and shows Labour heading for a crushing defeat on a par with the Conservative's 1997 humiliation.

The poll of 238 key marginal seats, broken down into the key electoral battlegrounds, projects that in a general election now the Conservatives would win 398 seats, Labour 160 and the Liberal Democrats 44. This would give David Cameron’s Conservatives a landslide majority of 146 seats.

September 26, 2008