More reason to go to the polls now, Mr Brown

The brilliant Polling Report blog has an election calculator that you can download. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be there at the moment. Fortunately, I have already downloaded it.

Earlier today I said the polls were deceptive and that they actually didn't make too bad reading for Labour. Here's the proof (albeit not an exact science)...

Taking an average of the three polls out today the situation looks like this:

Labour 39%
Tories 36.7%
Lib Dems 14.6%

If this was translated in to seats the results are quite striking. They would mean:

Labour 355
Tories 238
Lib Dems 29

In other words - a Labour majority of 60 seats.

Such is the bias of the first past the post system due to the efficient spread of the Labour vote, the Tories are vastly under-represented in parliament. In fact, for the Tories to win this election out right they need to polling in the region of a whopping 10% more than Labour.

Now obviously, this is not an exact science. The SNP will clearly take a few seats off Labour and all it takes is a small swing to shift one or two seats from Labour to Tory. But even just a 2.3% lead in the polls translates as a 60 seat majority for Labour must be very encouraging for Brown to go to the polls.

60 seats could easily mean the Tories dump Cameron - though that would be a catastrophic mistake. If he can be polling by 4% by Monday then Brown would be a fool not go ahead.

If you would like me to email you the polling report seat calculator, let me know via the address on the right - other wise Polling report may well have put it back up...