The Conservative vote now looks more solid, but 1 in 6 are still claiming they’ll vote for ‘Others’.

The Conservative leadership is waking up this morning to three new polls giving it a comfortable lead. The signs from the study conducted yesterday are that the Dave & Wifey show has given the Tories a brief lift – as did the Libdem Conference for Clegg. The Liberal Democrat rise left the Tories unchanged and the Government down just over 1%. As ‘the Party of Change’, it’s likely they stole some intentions from minority Parties; I doubt (especially in the light of our Scottish news yesterday)that the Libdem lift will last long.

But it’s the Others vote I find intriguing: I’ve lived through a few elections in my time, and I’ve never seen it as consistently high as in this run-in. Interesting is the tendency for it to be higher in the online studies – where no human interviewer is present and thus (in my view) people will be more open about their perceived ‘socially unacceptable’ preferences.

The Slog has already recorded that canvassing numbers for Farage are looking very healthy in the Buckingham constituency. I know this is just one seat with very special circumstances, but I do believe a large number of self-declared ‘Others’ have moved outside the political mainstream, and are supporting either UKIP or the BNP in larger numbers than many people realise. I remain of the view that the BNP is a bogeyman of interest only to Peter Hain and a few of the more desperately disenfranchised. But UKIP, I think, might surprise everyone. Given they’re a rag-tag of barmpots, this is most disturbing.