Whoever winds up being in power after the General Election will lack a democratic mandate to rule.

The website Politicshome has commissioned a research poll about tactical voting. While this scores 11 out of 10 for imagination (this is a vital subject neglected by the other pollsters) it gets minus 34 for analytical relevance.

The first point made by the site is that ‘Labour supporters are almost twice as likely to vote tactically‘ compared to Tories and Libdems. Given that the Party has the lowest level of support in its history and its Government has done nothing for core Labour voters apart from render them unemployed, this is not exactly new news.

Unfortunately, it’s not even accurate news either: the Tory tactical voting level is lower than that among Libdems by a factor of 15% in comparative terms. Compared to New Labour, Tory support is 150% more loyal.

Getting the obvious wrong is bad enough, but missing the obvious is also a bit of a clanger. This study is a triumph for the Tories: it shows conclusively that the commitment of their voters is higher than that awarded to any other Party.

It’s difficult to see how these findings could be ‘a boost for the Libdems’ as Politicshome suggests. Their most vulnerable seats (see Slogs passim) are in Scotland – where the research shows that 22% of SNP voters will switch to keep an incumbent out, and there are few if any Tory incumbents. My sources suggest that SNP voters would rather vote Labour than Libdem, and given the nature of Scottish politics that would make complete sense.

In the West country, most Labour support levels are so poor, getting 20% of them is heading towards those pure maths debates about the divisibility of nought. There too, I understand that Paddy Ashdown is privately worried about his Party’s prospects – and Norman Baker thinks he may well lose his seat.

But there is another extrapolation from these data, and if like me you don’t like any of the existing Parties much, it is rather encouraging. For apart from the fact that 18% on average now have no real passionate loyalty to their Party, a further 45% at least (on my calculation) won’t vote at all – either as a form of protest, or from a sense of deep apathy about the likelihood of anything changing as a result of them voting. That makes almost exactly two-thirds of the electorate who don’t call themselves ‘adherents’ of any Party – a figure spookily close to the result in Norwich North last year.

Thus, whoever is in 10 Downing Street a month from now will lack any real democratic validity as the country’s Leader. For once showing some maturity, Cameron has accepted this by saying he will ‘not have a mandate’. He won’t: but I stick to my view that he will emerge from the General Election as Prime Minister