UK Election – Final 100 Days With Tories in the Lead

With 100 days until the U.K. general election, Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives took the lead in three polls, while opposition leader Ed Miliband returned his campaign focus to the National Health Service.

ComRes Ltd. and Survation both put the Tories at 31 percent support and Labour at 30 percent, and YouGov gave the Conservatives the edge with 34 percent to 33 percent, suggesting the race to the May 7 vote remains on a knife edge. Labour had a lead of as much as 10 points a year ago.

The likeliest outcome of the election remains another hung Parliament, in which no party has an overall majority. If neither big party were able to form a functioning government, that would raise the prospect of a second election within a few months, for the first time since 1974. Adding to the uncertainty that has rattled investors is Cameron’s pledge of a referendum on staying in the European Union if he’s re-elected.

Both sides played to their strengths on Tuesday, with Cameron continuing his focus on the economy, and Miliband talking about health care, an area where Labour generally enjoys a clear lead over the Tories. That, though, is now threatened, with the ComRes poll finding people saying they trust Cameron as much as Miliband to ensure the NHS has enough funding.

“Without a strong economy, you can’t have the strong NHS,” Cameron told BBC Radio 2. “I’m not saying the job is done. I’m not saying we’ve finished our work. But we’re on the right track.”

via Bloomberg

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.