There was a bit of a shock (for me anyway) when the Comres rentaquote on the BBCNews Channel tonight suggested his company’s figures were predicting a 73% turnout. That’s quite a jump from the 55% being touted by most pundits (including this one) just four short weeks ago.

If we assume then that 18% who weren’t going to vote are now going to, then it probably makes sense to hypothesise that they’d vote for what was new in the mix rather than what already existed.

At the start of the campaign, the Cleggies had an average Poll rating of 18%. Today, it’s an average of 27%. Taking a margin of error at + or – 2%, that would mean at best that the LibDems have increased their support from 16% to 29%, and new voters might be at 16% or 20%. So that leaves 3-7% of new voters unaccounted for. That may sound small, but given the small gap between the Parties, it’s a lot.

It comes back as always with research to the difference between stated intention about future actions, and likely behaviour based on past performance. So here’s my take on this: the most loyally supported Party in the UK by a country mile is the Conservative Party. And the ones least loyal to the voting process are the new starry-eyed folks Nick Clegg has dragged in. Given that behavioural history, my money is on the Tory intentions being more reliable. (It is on this basis that the Angus Reid results have consistently put the Conservatives further ahead than many major polls).

The Slog prediction remains unchanged: Conservatives to win with a 10-20 seat majority.