Why are punters ignoring pollsters to back Tories?

Who’s got it right - the punters or the pollsters? Or, to put it another way, why are Tory supporters kidding themselves by backing David Cameron to head the largest party after 7 May when virtually all the pollsters show a persistent Labour lead?

True, the gap has narrowed: a year ago Labour were five or six points ahead of the Tories. Recently the lead has reduced to just one or two points, and Sunday’s polls continued the theme:

Opinium for The Observer has: Lab 35 (up 1), Con 33 (up 1), Lib Dems 8 (up 1), Ukip 14 (down 1), Greens 6 (down 2).

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ComRes for the Independent and Sunday Mirror has: Lab 34 (unchanged), Con 32 (down 1) Lib Dems 7 (u/c), Ukip 16 (down 2), Greens 4 (up 1).

YouGov for the Sunday Times gives Labour a three-point lead: Lab 35 (up 1), Con 32 (up 1), Lib Dem (u/c), 7 Ukip 15 (u/c), Green 6 (u/c).

The fact is, only two out of 19 polls conducted in February have shown the Tories ahead and with the first-past-the-post system favouring Labour, these poll numbers all point to Ed Miliband leading the biggest party in the House of Commons. (The Electoral Reform Society has published a useful guide by the veteran poll analyst Prof John Curtice to how votes are likely to translate into seats.)

And yet, and yet… the betting markets make David Cameron and the Tories favourites to have the largest contingent of MPs. Why?

Mike Smithson of Political Betting suggests Conservative punters are being grossly optimistic – just as they were five years ago.

Smithson began compiling an index of spread-betting prices ahead of the last election. With three months to go to election day, opinion polls were giving the Tories leads of up to seven per cent - short of what they might need for an overall majority.

• Countdown to 7 May: check The Week's daily election round-up

Nonetheless, says Smithson, “what turned out to be the grossly over-confident blue [ie pro-Tory] mood on the betting markets” wasn’t affected by the opinion polls ... “The money was piling on an overall majority in spite of the ample polling evidence that this wasn’t going to happen. And that was how the election turned out.”

Smithson reckons they could be making the same mistake now that they did in 2010. In short, wishful thinking has not been dented.

Smithson has another chart showing that the opinion polls conducted in February 2010, three months ahead of the May election, mainly predicted the eventual result accurately: they showed Tory leads of between five and eight per cent. The share on election day was Conservatives 36, Labour 29, Lib Dems 23, Ukip 3, Greens 1.

Who is to say that the current polling, conducted at the same time in the pre-election cycle, won’t similarly be proved correct?

Well, Tory cabinet ministers are convinced the polls will change in their favour, if not now, then closer to election day.

In a recent article for The Guardian, Isabel Hardman explained how this belief had been bolstered by Cameron’s campaign chief Lynton Crosby.

He has been running private polls in marginal seats since the start of the year that “apparently suggest the Conservatives will do better than previous surveys have suggested," wrote Hardman. "Indeed, many MPs in those seats are finding a better reception on the doorstep than they’d expected and some who were looking for jobs outside parliament now think they have a chance of holding on after all.”

This kind of private polling briefed to friendly journalists is dismissed as “comfort polling” by former Tory deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft, now a pollster on a grand scale. Just over a year ago he laid into similar briefings conducted by Tory officials.

“There is nothing wrong with trying to cheer up the troops, he says. “But the correct response to bad poll numbers is to learn from them and change them, not to try and rebut them. Boosting morale is one thing; being in denial is another thing altogether.”