Britain’s main opposition Conservatives are taking a commanding lead in the key seats they must gain to form a majority at the looming general election, a newspaper survey said yesterday.
A YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph put the Conservatives at 39 percent, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s governing Labour Party at 29 percent and the Liberal Democrats at 19 percent.
If those figures were translated uniformly into seats in parliament’s lower House of Commons, the center-right Conservatives would fall just short of a majority, which stands at 326 seats.
However, in 32 key northern English marginal seats held by Labour, the Conservatives lead the center-left party by 42 percent to 36 percent — enough for all of them to fall into Conservative hands.
The Conservatives need to hold all their seats and gain 117 more for a majority at the next general election, due by June.
British general elections are done on a first-past-the-post system. While commonplace in many other European countries, hung parliaments and coalition governments are rare in Britain.
The Conservatives have been plowing resources into the key marginal seats in a bid to help secure a majority.
“A minority government, or the cobbling together of a coalition, would be a wretched result,” the Daily Telegraph said in its editorial.
“When marginal voters were reminded that their seat could decide the election, the Tory lead rose from six to eight points ... Many people assume their votes do not count — but, told that they can help change the government, they seize the opportunity with alacrity,” it said.
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