As an experienced market researcher and communications strategist, The Slogger feels able to comment on what the opinion polls really mean – and how the Opposition must now change tack.

Opinion polls are about a lot more than numbers. The key to this kind of research (as with almost all consumer investigation) is an interpretation based in insight. I’ve blogged quite a bit on the (a) marginals and (b) abstention factors. But since I first did so, the Conservative lead has narrowed so much, those considerations – while still vitally important – are less decisive than they were: for all its innate unfairness, in the end our voting system will shift the advantage towards the overall majority view.

But what has this narrowing of lead truly represented? This is my view based on both the maths – but also the nature of the contest, and how voters are most probably thinking at the moment. For this I’m indebted to the Poll of Polls website, the resting place of all sad research wonks.

Between 19th Feb (when the Conservatives had a 12-point lead) and March 10th (when an equivalent study showed the lead to have shrunk to 5 points) the following things happened:

1. An additional 3% of the electorate shifted from abstention to a professed intention to vote.
2. The Liberal Democrat share of voting intentions dropped 2%.
3. The Conservative share dropped by 1%. This last figure is extremely important, because it explodes the myth that Tories are defecting to Labour.
4. The Labour share of intentions to vote has increased by 6%.

The sharp-eyed will have spotted that 3+2+1 = 6. My point here is that (while we lack the qualitative information to confirm it) there appears to be no collapse at all in the Tory VOTE in terms of solid numbers. Rather, with 5% of intentions having changed, the main Opposition Party has lost just one point of SHARE.

An obvious observation from this is that the Libdems are facing a more dangerous squeeze than the Tories – and as voter minds get more concentrated closer to Election day, this may well accentuate.

But a more telling one is that the Conservative Party is failing to convince the undecided voter. This is not exactly new information: one’s own gut feel has been communicating this for nearly a fortnight now. But reverting once more to observation (b) earlier, I remain convinced that there are far more unwilling abstainers out there than the pollsters could ever grasp. ‘Grasp’ as a verb is used in both the metaphorical and physical sense, for polling companies can’t stuff their samples with non-voters: this would be a very expensive way of telling us what we already know – that most folks are bored by politics, and hacked off with politicians who behave badly.

Be that as it may, the data are still telling us that the closeness of this contest is exaggerated. And common sense suggests that far more of the abstainers will be disgusted with Government failure, rather than Opposition impotence.

This is where the Tories are getting it wrong. Cameron’s unwavering support for a clearly daft voting system, his privileged social background, his refusal to distance himself from the Ashcroft money, his slick equivocation, and his popinjay Chancellor – all these count against him as a man promising a fresh start. The central Tory claim as a brand – that it will face up to mending Britain’s broken society, economy and political system – is incredible. Like it or not, he is seen as part of the Establishment that created the mess. He may think that pasting some pc wallpaper over the cracks will do the job, but it can’t: if anything, his toffee-nosed correctness is offensive to huge swathes of the Tory-voting population.

My estimate is that a good one in six voters are still ready to be convinced, if only Cameron will hand them at least a crumb of comfort. It is already too late for him to come across as the Man of Truth: that is a golden opportunity already tossed away. But there is one card left to the Conservative leader.

This is what I call The Commercial Perspective. Although his experience was brief, Cameron is not the product of mere professional politics. His Chancellor comes from a successful retail family. His Business Minister has a marketing background and heavyweight financial experience.

From here on, either the Tories adopt a dual focus, or they are doomed. The negative one is to highlight the fantasies and woolly drivel offered by Brown, Harman, Mandelson, Jowell, Straw and everyone else in the Government clearly incapable of running a bath. The positive one is to stress what most people in Britain feel instinctively: that if nothing else, Conservative Governments will always know how to balance the books.

But the Opposition will never get this across until they roll up their sleeves and slog it out with New Labour’s alternative reality machine. Above all, the Cameroons must ignore Clegg, Mandelson and the rest of the whingeing Minnies – and give the People both a harsh vision of the danger they face…and the rewards that can come from taking punishment with fortitude.

I say this not as a Tory, but as a loyal Brit who cannot bear the thought of five more years of cynical mendacity at the hands of Brownite Labour – a Party more discredited than any Government for sixty years or more.