Labour leads in London but could the Tories make gains too?

The latest bespoke London opinion poll gives Labour a big lead over the Conservatives. The survey by ComRes for ITV News London, which was conducted before the gruesome Battle For Number 10 TV “event”, gives Ed Milband’s party 46% of the capital’s intended vote compared with 32% for David Cameron’s. That’s a vast margin compared with the neck-and-neck national picture and, largely in line with other recent London polling, suggests Labour will gain at least six seats in the capital and maybe as many as nine. They already hold 38 out of 73.

But is it all doom and gloom for metropolitan blues? As ITV’s Simon Harris writes, the hard numbers indicate that they could take three seats from the Liberal Democrats. The poll shows Nick Clegg’s crew scoring just 8%, putting them in an unhappy fourth place behind, of all people in this cosmopolitan city, UKIP on 9%. The Greens, having finished third in the 2012 London mayoral contest, will be disappointed to be trailing on only 4%. But it’s the yellows who could be feeling the most depressed come the morning of May 8.

The party has seven Greater London seats at present. If the ComRes results are projected evenly across the territory, only Vince Cable in Twickenham is on track to survive. Labour would profit from Lib Dem woes too: Lynne Featherstone would be removed from Hornsey and Wood Green, Lauren Keith would fail to succeed the departed Sarah Teather in Brent Central and Simon Hughes could exit Bermondsey and Old Southwark. But the Tories would do just as well, making gains around the south-western fringes that the Lib Dems have made a stronghold in recent times: Tom Brake would be ejected from Carshalton and Wallington, energy secretary Ed Davey would say goodbye to Kingston and Surbiton and Paul Burstow would be hoofed out of Sutton and Cheam.

A suburban Conservative hat trick like that would take the icing off Labour’s London cake and might help save Cameron’s bacon too. But all this leaves out two factors, both of them known about yet hard for pollsters to isolate and quantify. One is any effect of Labour tactical voting in that eroding but still substantial orange belt. In 2010, the Lib Dems lost Richmond Park to Zac Goldsmith but held on to everything else. Could Labour supporters, knowing their own candidate couldn’t win, have helped thwart Tory advances? If so, will they do so again?

Then there’s the incumbency effect. An advantage of being a Lib Dem MP is that your minority status helps you to stand out and survive, as long as you are well-liked locally. Hughes is the classic London case. Having won what was thought to be a solid Labour seat after the most vicious by election battle in recent history – ask Peter Tatchell – in 1983, he has repelled all challenges since, the 1997 Labour landslide and all.

Bermondsey and Old Southwark is on Labour’s national hit list, but only just. Even after the party’s strong local performance in last May’s borough elections and the current low levels of Lib Dem support, they know Hughes, his party’s deputy leader, will take a lot of shifting. The same probably goes for Davey, even though the Tories took control of his local council on the same day as Lib Dems were losing ground in Southwark. Similar forces may well come in to play for other besieged but high profile Lib Dems too.

Full details of ComRes poll are here, with the number-crunched headline figures in the first column on page 19. There’s lots of other interesting stuff too. Your wise comments are, as ever, welcome.