ICM poll points to hung parliament with the Tories as the largest party

The Sunday Telegraph’s ICM poll has the Tories up three to 36, Labour up one to 29 and the Lib Dems down three to 27. Paddy Hennessy reports that the paper calculates that this would translate to the Tories having 279 seats, Labour 261 and the Lib Dems 78.

Nick Clegg has always said that the party with the most votes and the most seats has a mandate to govern and so in these circumstances would likely allow the Tories to form a minority government by not making any deal with Labour. As I write in the column this week, the Tories would then press away with their emergency budget as planned. They are confident that the Lib Dems would not want to risk being blamed for the market and political chaos that would follow it being voted down.

Tory number crunchers, though, think they could win a majority with 38 percent of the vote and this poll puts them within striking distance of that figure.