General election: Sheffield Tories choose Nick Clegg over Labour

The Liberal Democrats have seen a late rise in support in Sheffield Hallam, according to Nick Clegg, making the deputy prime minister "very confident" of retaining his seat.

Mr Clegg was speaking before the publication of this week's ICM poll, which gave him a seven-point lead over his Labour challenger. The poll showed Mr Clegg was being boosted by Tory voters switching to keep out Labour, something Mr Clegg said he was picking up on the doorstep.

"I have spent a lot of time, as have my campaign team, knocking on doors, and I think things are very much moving in our direction," he told the Financial Times.

But he acknowledged his 15,000 majority was likely to be cut, saying: "In elections no one has a right to a North Korean majority, that is the whole point of a democracy . . . But I am very confident that I will be returned to parliament."

A member of his team added: "There are large swaths of this constituency which have always voted Tory but we expect them to vote for us this time."

Some Conservatives have suggested their party leadership is deliberately trying to protect Mr Clegg's seat since he is more likely to sign a coalition agreement with them than some of his more leftwing possible successors.

Recent polls from the Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft showed significantly fewer voters said they had heard from the Conservatives than in most other seats, even those considered unwinnable, suggesting the party was not fighting hard in Sheffield Hallam.

The Twitter feed for Ian Walker, the Tory candidate, showed he spent part of the final weekend of campaigning in High Peak, a seat the Conservatives are trying to protect from a Labour challenge.

Some Conservatives in Hallam are openly backing Mr Clegg. John Harthman, the Conservative candidate in 2001, recently wrote an open letter to voters saying: "Conservatives in Sheffield Hallam have a choice. We can stick to our party interests and vote for a Tory candidate who won't win, or we can back Nick Clegg to make sure that Ed Miliband's Labour party doesn't sneak in through the back door."

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His message seems to be getting through.

Among the ladies who lunch - and usually vote Tory - at Todds Coffee House, a smart cafe in the affluent village of Dore, fear of Labour is driving them towards Mr Clegg. "We do not want South Yorkshire to become purely Labour and the only chance is to back Nick Clegg," said one pensioner dining with three friends, who declined to be named.

Rosemary, a Conservative voter who ran her own marketing business before retiring, said: "Quite a few people I know are voting Lib Dem to keep Labour out. I am going to."

John Gilruth, a retired company director shopping in the village, said: "Clegg would be better because it stops Labour and that Scottish woman" - a reference to Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish National party, and the expectation Labour and the SNP could join forces after the election.

<>Mr Clegg has also been helped by the fact that Labour has put the seat way down its target list and has not poured resources into it.

Oliver Coppard, the Labour candidate, said: "I understand entirely why, when you have a limited amount of resource in a campaign, you would direct it at those seats where you have the best chance of victory."

But he added: "We've been told from the beginning that we would have to build this campaign from the ground up and that is exactly what we've done."

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