UK elections

Oh no!! Come on Clegg!!!

General election 2010: David Cameron eyes the prize

• Patrick Wintour and Julian Glover
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 5 May 2010 21.32 BST
• Article history

Conservative leader David Cameron looks through a doorway before a rally in Bristol. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

The Conservatives appear to be on the brink of regaining power at the end of one of the most tumultuous and tightly fought general election campaigns since the second world war.

A Guardian/ICM poll shows the Conservatives with an eight-point lead over Labour, just short of what they need for an overall majority. The survey put the Conservatives on 36%, Labour on 28% and the Liberal Democrats on 26%.

There is no sign of Labour or the Lib Dems closing the gap on the Tories – and at least three other polls have come up with similar results. Only one of the four polls projected Labour gaining the largest number of seats.

If the Guardian/ICM poll correctly predicts voting patterns, it would leave Cameron just short of an overall majority, but close to being able to rule with the help of unionist parties, especially if the Tory seat share is pushed higher by a stronger showing in the key marginals, the central goal of the well-funded Tory organisation. And it would leave Nick Clegg with little option but to give a Cameron minority government the first chance to try to push through a Queen's speech and budget.

The special poll – based on a sample double the normal size – predicted that Conservative support would be slightly above 36%, up three on the most recent Guardian/ICM poll but the same as another ICM poll published on Sunday.

That is eight points ahead of Labour, on 28%, identical to the last ICM poll. The Lib Dems have fallen back slightly to 26%, down two. Other parties are on 10%, including Ukip on 3%, the BNP on 2% and Greens on 1%, with support for the Welsh and Scottish nationalists at 3%. The tight race looks set to increase turnout, with 69% of respondents saying they are certain to vote. To the intense frustration of Labour cabinet ministers, Clegg has limited his options by saying that if one party secures the largest share of the vote and most seats, they will have a mandate to try to form a government. On the Guardian share of the vote, and a uniform national swing, the Conservatives would win 283 seats, Labour 253 and the Liberal Democrats 81.

But there is evidence the Tories are doing better in the marginals and may reach as many as 300 seats. A party needs 324 seats to claim an overall majority, assuming Sinn Féin refuses to take its expected four seats.

Paradoxically, all three parties would view this result with mixed feelings. The Tories would be free to form a government for the first time since 1997. Conservative support of 36% is almost four points up on the party's 2005 performance – but it is far below the party's recent ICM maximum of 45%, and Labour's 1997 share of 43%.

The Lib Dems, whose profile has soared thanks to Clegg's performances in the leaders' debates, would have secured their highest share of the vote, just above the 1983 record, and made themselves a major presence in the Commons. But they cannot be sure three-party politics would be a permanent feature of the British constitution.

Labour would have survived the drubbing it expected at one point and avoided tumbling to a potentially life-threatening third place.

Senior cabinet ministers were still trying to squeeze the Lib Dems in the 100 or so key Labour-Tory marginals that will decide the outcome. Alan Johnson, the home secretary, said: "The Lib Dems are on a slow puncture and the air is coming of the tyre. Whether enough of it will come out by Thursday, I don't know.

"People liked what they saw with Nick Clegg three weeks ago, and ever since then he has been a bit grating, he's been trying the same tricks in every television debate and it gets a bit wearing.''

But Clegg was confident that he would make progress in his target seats, and his party, for the first time in nearly a century, may be in a position to block a Tory minority government. He and his strategists will face the delicate political task of how hard to press the Conservatives in any formal or informal talks on the budget and Queen's speech. Lord Mandelson, a key Labour figure in any coalition talks, said the parties would need to talk to one another in the event of a hung parliament.

He said the challenge would be to achieve compromise between rival parties without "diluting your policies into a sort of lowest common denominator offer".

"You would be both responding to the outcome of the election that the public has given you, and constructing the strongest possible programme for government in the circumstances," he said. "People might say that compromise and co-operation is in itself good. I can understand that viewpoint. I would say: but not at the expense of the clear, coherent policies that the country needs."

No one at Labour high command knows how Brown will react to a clear defeat, or whether he will stay as prime minister to see if he can form a progressive alliance with the Liberal Democrats, emphasising his willingness to offer Clegg a referendum on electoral reform for the Commons, something Cameron has so far rejected. If Brown goes, there is evidence that Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, may offer herself as a transitional 18-month leader, though that move will be opposed by other senior party figures. Before heading off for his Witney constituency last night, Cameron rammed home the theme of his past 48 hours.

"The central argument is this if you want to wake up on Friday with a new government, a new team and a new prime minister starting to clear up the mess for the last 13 years, then it is only a Conservative government that can provide what you need."

Brown, a man who only found his rhetorical voice only in the last four days of the campaign again pleaded with voters to return home to Labour, again warning that their tax credits were under threat.

Inside, the Labour campaign there is a pent-up fury at the impact of the TV debates saying it squeezed policy out of the campaign for days on end, as the media focussed on process, and Clegg's inspring first performance. Tony Blair is one of many Labour figures who believe on the basis of this experience he was right to reject TV leaders' debates.