Conservatives lead in new poll

Britain’s ruling Conservatives took a five point lead over Labour in an Ipsos-MORI survey on Thursday, the latest poll to show David Cameron’s party gaining an edge just seven days before a knife-edge election.
The Conservatives and Ed Miliband’s opposition Labour Party have been neck-and-neck in most polls since the start of the year, but by Thursday seven of the 10 pollsters covering the May 7 election had Cameron’s Conservatives ahead by varying degrees. In a poll for London’s Evening Standard newspaper, Ipsos MORI put that lead at five points, after the Conservatives gained two percentage points to hold 35 percent support and Labour dropped five percentage points to 30 percent. The results helped to keep sterling near a two-month high against a weak dollar.
The election, which could determine Britain’s place in the European Union and Scotland’s future in the United Kingdom, is the closest since the 1970s with neither of the two main parties able to open up a big enough lead to rule alone.
Surveys show that, instead, millions of voters are flocking to once-marginal parties, especially in Scotland where the Scottish National Party (SNP) looks set to make major gains, and in England where both big parties are losing votes to the anti-EU UKIP.