Tories comfortably ahead in the most marginal seats

On Coffee House we frequently ask why the Tories do not get Lord Ashcroft to clarify his tax status. The silence over it seems an obvious strategic vulnerability and something that is bound to create some bad press for the Tories during an election campaign. But a poll in the Sunday Telegraph today, first reported on Tory Diary, shows just how effective the Ashcroft marginal seats operation has been. It finds that in the thirty most marginal seats the Tories are on 44 percent, Labour 20 and the Liberal Democrats 18. One of the things that makes me thing the Tory majority will be relatively sizable is that the marginal seats operation is now concentrating its work on seats that are quite a long way down the Tory target list.

PS UK Polling Report adds the context that at the last election, the vote share in these seats was 38 for the Tories, 31 for Labour and 25 for the Lib Dems.