Labour has cut the Tory lead in the polls to just 5% according to the latest YouGov poll for The Times. The LibDems are back to 10% after a small recent drop but are still failing to make inroads with their anti-Brexit stance.

The survey suggests that the gap between the two main parties is down to single figures for the first time since Theresa May called the snap election on 18 April. Labour has made steady gains in recent weeks.

It’s unclear if the Manchester suicide bombing has been a factor but the trend was emerging prior to the terror attack.

It has been a strange few days in an already strange election campaign. The latest polls suggest that we still can’t be certain of the outcome and there is no way of guessing what will happen in the next two weeks.

This general election campaign has been unlike any before it.  The date was known almost four and a half years in advance.  Before the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, passed in 2011, election campaigns lasted just a month.

The 2015 campaign kicked off in earnest when the Conservatives unvelied their first campaign poster on January 2nd, arguments about the TV debates started a couple of days later, so we are talking  four months of solid electioneering.  The longest election campaign in British history has made almost no difference at all to voter intentions.

Compare The YouGov poll  at 100 days to go:

CON – 34%
LAB – 33%
UKIP – 14%
LDEM – 7%
GRN – 7%

with the TNS-BRMB poll, today the last day before the vote:

CON – 33%
LAB – 32%
UKIP – 14%
LDEM – 8%
GRN – 6%

Note a single party has changed their share by more than one per cent. Given that the polls have a 2-3% margin of error that’s no change at all.

Lord Ashcroft grabbed the headlines once again today when he unveiled his seat-by-seat polls in Scotland and added fuel to the speculation that the SNP will deliver a Labour rout in May.  His polls are different because he looks at individual constituencies not the national picture.

The headlines today paint a joyous picture for the SNP and there is no doubt that they will do well.  The Ashcroft poll suggests that they will win 50 of the 56 59 Scottish seats.  Aggregate polls suggest that the number will be nearer forty. So are there reasons to doubt Ashcroft?

1. He is a Tory peer and a lifelong supporter of the Conservatives who is estimated to have donated as much as £10m to the party. We might be forgiven thinking that he’s tempted to spin for them.
2. In his three national polls this year the Conservatives are ahead in two (by 6 points in one) and level in the other.   If you look at all the other polls over the same period it’s nine-four in Labour’s favour.
3. His polls are snap shots at a specific point in time so can’t really be relied upon other than at the time they are published.
4. He calls into question his own methodology. “Most of my constituency research is focused on marginal seats. But in post-referendum Scotland, the concept of a marginal seat is rather obsolete”.
5. The UK General Election 2015 Blog thinks that there is a problem in the weighting of today’s results. Labour is ahead amongst over 65s in Scotland “The over 65s are going to be the most likely to vote it is accepted by everyone. Yet in Lord Ashcroft’s poll he weights the respondents down in his survey for the over 65s from 28% of his actual respondents to 18% of the actual figures used”.

One prediction on which it is difficult to cast doubt is that LibDem Danny Alexander, number two in the Treasury and member of the coalition’s gang of four ‘The Quad’, will lose his seat. According to Ashcroft he is behind in the Inverness seat he has held for a decade by 29 points. If even half-true, it’s an impossible hill to climb.