All Still Left to Play For?

We head into the last week of the campaign with the parties saying its all left to play for. Reallistically, given the lack of movement in the polls following Brown's biogot-gate gaffe and Cameron's "victory" in the debate on thursday and most of the media calling the election as a conservative victory yesterday, I suspect that there's not much left to play for. Labour's vote is unlikely to slip much lower than 26%, but is also unlikely to rise beyond 30%. Similarly, it's now difficult to see the Tories climbing much above 36% or falling much below 32%. The Lib-Dems seem to be holding up better than most expected in face of attacks from both sides and I would anticipate them polling somewhere between 27 and 30%. Even at the extreme and with a marginal boost that would leave the tories just short of an overall majority.

What other factors might still come into play?

Tactical Voting?
I'm not sure how big a factor this will be this time round. In Lib-Dem/Tory marginals the Lib-Dems are probably already benefitting from some tactical votes fromLabour (which have maybe become owned Lib_dem votes now) whateve further gains they make will probably be off-set by UKIP voters supporting the tories if they follow their leader's instructions (which it must be said UKIP are very bad at doing).
In Labour-Tory contests its hard to see the Labour getting enough Lib-Dem support to see off a string swing from the tories.
In Labour/Lib-Dem contests, I can't really see either option being attractive to Tory voters. There might be a little benefit to the Lib-Dems, but it will be lost in the overall Lab-LD swing.
In three or four way marginals, the concept of tactical voting becomes very hazy anyway and it becomes much more difficult to predict what will happen.

Turnout?
There seems to be an argument (maybe wishful thinking) amongst Labour and Tory supporters that most of the Lib-Dem bump is made up of young people who recently haven't been great at actually voting. I think there are two counter-arguments here - (1) in recent years the polling companies having got much better at accounting for factors like likelihood to vote and weighting samples accordingly. In recent years they tend to have got things pretty close. I see no reason why this should be different this time round. (2) Perhaps one of the reasons why young people haven't voted is that they haven't felt attracted to what was on offer. The use of social netweorking tools, Tv debates, etc.. this time round seems to have energised this group more than before. Past behaviour might not be an accurate predictor here. Young people are being drawn to the Lib-Dems and, especially where they have a strong challenge, the Greens because for the first time in a long time they see something different that speaks to them more. Of course, May 6th will show who's wrong and who's right.

In general on turn-out, this election has been a bit strange. Until this morning, when all the lamp-posts in Edinburgh seem to have sprouted political banners overnight, there has been much less visible sign of an election than in previous years, but paradoxically more people seem to be talking about it. I've gone from a few weeks ago being rather pessimistic about the turnout (fearing it would be well under 60%) to being cautiously optimistic (should comfortably pass 70%). This will increase the likelihood of the polls being accurate (and besides that would be a good sign for our democracy).

A final point. I came across a comment on a discussion thread yesterday that in a strange kind of way gave me real hope - one of the posters said that his 79 years old gran, who had voted Labour her entire life, was voting Green this time round. Maybe there's hope for us all and the days of the monkey in the red(or blue) rosette are finally numbered.