Nigel Farage falls behind in his target seat

Ukip has admitted it buried a private opinion poll showing Nigel Farage has fallen behind his Conservative rival in the seat he hopes to win in May's general election.

The poll by ComRes suggested the Ukip leader was locked in a very close three-horse race in South Thanet, a seaside constituency in Kent.

It put Mr Farage on 30 per cent, against 31 per cent for Conservative candidate Craig Mackinlay and 29 per cent for Labour's Will Scobie.

Mr Farage has said he will quit if he does not win.

The survey, revealed by the Mail on Sunday, had been commissioned by Arron Banks, a millionaire donor to the anti-EU and anti-immigration party.

The result will come as a shock, given that Mr Farage was the odds-on favourite to win the seat. A poll by Survation in February suggested an 11-point lead for Ukip in the constituency.

On Sunday the party said that the poll was a "rogue" result because it used weightings from 2010 voting figures, when Ukip had much less support.

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"It redistributes people who say they're not going to vote or will be away, back to Tories and Labour, as per 2010 numbers."

Without that weighting Mr Farage was in the lead, according to Mike Smithson, a psephologist and editor of the politicalbetting.com website.

The party spokesman admitted that victory for Mr Farage in the seat was not "cut and dried".

Britain's political establishment was left reeling last year after Ukip won more seats than any other UK party in the European elections.

Last autumn it secured the defection of two sitting Conservative MPs, Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless, who both won their subsequent by-elections.

Yet it has lost some of its momentum since then and although it is still polling at about 15 per cent - far ahead of the Liberal Democrats - it is expected to pick up only a handful of seats next month.

Its main targets are in the Southeast for example South Thanet, Thurrock, Clacton and Rochester.

Mr Farage tried to strike an optimistic note on Sunday, predicting that there were "more than a handful" of Tory MPs who could defect to his party if David Cameron entered another coalition with the Lib Dems.

Diane James, a Ukip MEP, said her party could survive the loss of Mr Farage.

Asked on Radio 5 if she dreaded that scenario, she replied: "No not in the least" before going on to name potential successors.

"We've got a very high calibre of individuals within Ukip, they are frequently on BBC and other media outlets: Susanne Evans, Patrick O'Flynn, Paul Nuttall . . . there are people there waiting," she said

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