Where the tories might have got it wrong....

Or, in other words, why the Lib-Dem boost disturbs them so much. Because it clearly does disturb them - hence Lord Tebbitt' rather arrogant and patronising comments about the need to burst the bubble sooner rather than later. The tory strategy seems to have been to poor lots of money into the marginals that they were in with the best chance of winning. To get an overall majority the tories would need to gain an extra 111 seats. Looking at their target list (lists vary slightly due to boundary changes, but still give a rough idea of the level we're talking about) 111 would be Morecambe and Lunsdale requiring a 6% swing. Currently the national swing from Labour to the tories is about 5% with possibly a 1-1.5% boost in the marginals, so this actually looks winnable. However, there are alot of seats in those 111 the tories won't win.

Fir a start there are 23 seats held by the Lib-Dems which all polls indicate the tories won't win one of. Then there are an additional 2 held by the SNP and one by an independant. I think we could also rule out any seats in Scotland where the tory vote appears to be falling almost as much as Labour's (which could present us with at least a possiblity that the tories will win the most seats but lose their only one in Scotland) and any seats where they would have to come from third to overtake the Lib Dems in second to win.

Jumping over all of these would take us down to Sherwood at 159 on the list requiring an 8.2% swing, which is looking a lot less likely. It gets worse for the tories - their strategy seems to have been based on the theory that they wouldn't be losing any seats to either Labour or the Lib-Dems, both of whom seemed in decline at the start of the campaign. However the Lib-Dem boost means that the polls are currently showing a 2.5%-3% swing from the tories to the Lib-Dems. Currently the tories are defending 13 seats from the Lib-Dems which would require a swing of less than 3% to lose. A few of these might be saved by the decision of UKIP not to stand against Euro-sceptic tories, but they could still lose about 10 of them. This means that in order to get a majority of just won they could be needing to win seats like Ealing North requiring 9.05% swing and to be honest at the moment, they look a long way off that at the moment.

To look at things another way, on May 6th for the tories the election could be won or lost in the South West of England. If they manage to turn yellow seats blue on the day, then they are in with a chance. If the status quo remains, it will be hard to get a majority, but they might be on course to be the largest party. If however, as seems likely at the moment, blue seats start turning yellow then the task for the conseervatives is going to be almost impossible.