Labour still leads poll race

2005-04-24 12:24

London - With 11 days left until the British general elections, a pair of fresh opinion polls Sunday showed Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party still in the lead, and voters largely bored.

A YouGov poll in the Sunday Times put Labour at 37%, compared with 33% for the main opposition Conservatives led by Michael Howard and 23% for the Liberal Democrats led by Charles Kennedy.

An ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph saw Labour at 39%, six points ahead of the Tories, with the Lib Dems at 21%, as campaigning for the May 5 election heats up.

Asked who'd make a better prime minister, 39% of respondents to the ICM/Sunday Telegraph poll picked Blair, who has seeking a third straight term in office, while 24% went for Howard and 19% for Kennedy.

Three weeks into the campaign, however, it looked as if British voters were largely immune to election fever.

Seventy-two percent in the YouGov/Sunday Times poll thought the politicians were "sticking to the same old script", and only 17% felt they were "engaging with the issues that matter".

Bored

A separate YouGov poll, this time for Sky News, indicated that 63% of voters thought the campaign has been boring, and that 34% found it interesting.

Issues uppermost in voters' minds remained the same: health (21%), taxes (15%), the economy (14%), and crime and education (both at 13%).

Immigration and the war against terrorism trailed at nine percent and four percent respectively, followed by Britain's relationship with Europe at four percent and Iraq at three percent.

The YouGov/Sunday Times poll was conducted by internet among 1 490 respondents between Thursday and Saturday, while the ICM/Sunday Telegraph poll involved 1 524 voters contacted by telephone last Wednesday through Friday.

- AFP