General election: Simulations put Labour-led coalition ahead

The current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition has a less than 5 per cent chance of continuing into the next parliament while a Labour-led administration occurs in 83 per cent of the scenarios after May's general election, according to the latest analysis from the Populus/Hanover Predictor.

Each week, Populus feeds polling data and other information into a proprietary computer model to produce a percentage likelihood of various outcomes.

Rick Nye, managing director of the pollster Populus, comments on this week's findings:

The general election has felt like a campaign in search of an inflection point; a game-changing moment that will somehow break the deadlock that the published polls continue to show.

Milestones such as the launch of the campaign, the TV debates and leaders' one-to-one interviews have come and gone leaving barely a dent on public opinion.

This week it was the turn of the parties' manifesto launches, timed to leave the best possible impression in voters' minds on the eve of postal votes being sent out, which could end up accounting for one in five of all ballots cast on May 7.

Again, early indications are that the pleas and promises made directly by the party leaders have once again fallen on largely deaf ears.

After a week of polling - where new surveys in Scotland showed the SNP pulling further ahead of Labour and a fresh batch of constituency polls from Lord Ashcroft fed into the Populus/Hanover election outcome predictor - the chances of Ed Miliband becoming prime minister have improved marginally. This is despite Labour's central seat projection dropping from 278 seats last week to 275 seats.

Most of this ground has been lost to the SNP, whose seat numbers have increased from 49 to 52. The Conservatives have increased their central seat projection by two seats to 272.

The other parties remain unchanged. The two largest parties continued to be neck and neck in terms of seats, with the SNP supporting or becoming part of a Labour-led government in nearly two out of every three simulations run.

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This lack of movement among the main parties is unsurprising, as they all sought to shore up their strategic weaknesses this week.

Mr Miliband tried to address his lack of economic credibility by promising to lock in deficit reduction; David Cameron attempted to combat the Conservatives' reputation for being the party solely for the well-off by offering bite-sized policies aimed at ordinary working families.

Nick Clegg appealed for support saying that the Liberal Democrats were relevant because they could leaven Labour's irresponsibility or the Tories' hardheartedness as the occasion required.

Nigel Farage went out of his way to show there was more to Ukip than limiting migration to Britain by pulling out of the EU.

The problem with all these attempts to play against type, is that having spent five years failing to address their respective problems, voters are entitled to be sceptical about each party's attempts to do so now.

If the outcome of this election boils down to a battle between the head and the heart - with voters who prefer Labour's values and motives but who believe the Conservatives offer a more credible leadership and economic management - the polls, if they break at all, are unlikely to do so until the point of decision, which for most people will still be polling day.

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