A poll conducted by Populus/The Times reveals that the Conservatives still enjoy a potential seven-point swing in the marginals around the country. Even though recent polls suggest that the gap between Labour and the Tories has narrowed nationally, this latest survey includes marginals (51 to 150) in which Labour may lose out to the Conservatives. Total Politics speaks to Dr Andrew Russell, director of the Centre for Democracy and Elections at the University of Manchester.

Do polls actually influence voter opinion?

There are all sorts of good grounds to think that polls provide the background information that voters come to see and which can be used to catch the votes effectively. That said it is often difficult to pierce your way through to the rather obscure polling methods that are used. If you take the Populus poll for example it is actually a poll of marginal seats that are held by Labour and threatened by the Conservatives, leaving out the marginals with Liberal Democrats or marginals where the Conservatives are the incumbents. That is often missed out of the poll’s analysis. The message of the poll appeared to be Labour are neck and neck but there was lots of contextual information missing.

Would you say that the “neck and neck” claims deliver a distorted image?

In most of these constituencies, Labour started with a very healthy lead in 2005 — so the story of a pro-Conservative swing was missed I think by the headlines this morning. The story that we hear is that there has been a narrowing of the poll gap nationally over the last ten days. But swings to the Conservatives in the marginals appear to be greater than the national swings. I do feel there is a media frenzy about the narrowing of the gap, but almost all of the polls I’ve seen suggest a slim Conservative majority. There seems to be an assumption that the gap is going to be closing even more whereas you may as well see that the gap will widen. I think an outsider would rather be in David Cameron’s position than in Gordon Brown’s right now. But that’s not to say that things can’t change dramatically.

What is special about this election?

There is the perception in this election that it could be closer than it has been for a number of years. I think this will promote a higher turnout than we’ve seen in the last two or three general elections. The leaders and some issues of the party programmes are much more scrutinised which will generally be good for democracy. I am not saying that the public are in love with politics. But people seem to think it matters more who wins. There seems to be a bit more of a discernable difference between the parties and there is clear blue water as they say between the main parties ideologically.