How close is Ukip to taking away seats from the Conservatives in May? Lord Ashcroft has surveyed the Ukip-Tory battleground in his latest round of constituency polling. He has surveyed four likely Ukip targets to find out how the Conservative vote is holding up: Boston & Skegness, Castle Point, North East Cambridgeshire and South Basildon & East Thurrock. In all these cases, Ukip have jumped into second place but the Tories are still leading.
The closest race is Castle Point, where Nigel Farage launched Ukip’s election campaign last week. Ashcroft’s poll says the Tories are currently on 37 per cent, compared to 36 per cent for Ukip. This represents a 22 per cent swing towards Ukip since the last election:
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Boston & Skegness is also looking to be a close race, with Ukip currently three points behind the Conservatives — a 19 per cent swing since 2010:
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The two other seats have the Conservatives on a stronger footing. In North East Cambridgeshire, Ukip’s vote share has gone up to 25 per cent, a 13 per cent swing, but the Tories are still 21 per cent ahead. In Basildon & East Thurrock, Ukip currently has a 16 per cent swing from the Tories, but they are trailing six points behind:
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Aside from the headline numbers, there’s good and bad news for both parties in these seats. In the marginals Ashcroft has polled, Ukip are the party voters have heard from the most. In Castle Point for example, 20 per cent said they’d had contact from Ukip, compared to seven per cent from the Conservatives. Labour and the Lib Dems are nowhere to be seen, suggesting these seats will be primarily Tory vs. Ukip battles.
Although Ukip is playing the longer game in these target seats — building support gradually instead of piling in at the last minute — the Tories may begin to throw money and people at the constituencies, to hold or increase their support. Plus, in all four seats, a Conservative government is the preferred outcome of voters at the next election. The largest minority also said in all seats they are satisfied with Cameron as Prime Minister.
But for Ukip, the news is encouraging. At the last election, the party came in fourth place in three of the seats and it didn’t stand a candidate in Castle Point. Such significant swings are a good start and suggest they can make a good effort to flip the seats. The question is whether they have the resources and campaigning knowhow to extend their support into a lead, or whether the Tories will hold them in second place.
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