By Tim Montgomerie
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Last night the Eastleigh Conservatives re-adopted Maria Hutchings as their candidate for the by-election. Grant Shapps described her as a "mum of four who lives locally". You can read all about Maria on her Vote4Maria website and you can also follow her on Twitter. Most importantly you can get involved in helping her to win.
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Yesterday Paul Goodman argued that David Cameron needed to win Eastleigh and a new poll from Lord Ashcroft suggests that the Conservatives enjoy a slender 3% lead in the seat vacated by Chris Huhne. You can read Lord Ashcroft's commentary on the poll here. His conclusion is that the race is far too close to call. We may have a 3% local lead but (i) the Lib Dems have a very good local organisation and (ii) they also will be aiming to convince a large chunk of Labour voters to vote Lib Dem in order to keep the Tory out. The encouraging news for the Conservatives is that the people of Eastleigh are very positive about David Cameron and some of our key messages:
The poll finds that the Lib Dems have three big strengths as the campaign gets underway:
Clegg's party also has two big weaknesses in the eyes of more than half of the electorate:
Lord Ashcroft also asked who Eastleigh's voters EXPECTED to win. On that answer, at least, there was a clear win for the Liberal Democrats:
William Hill has the Tories 10/11 favourites and the Lib Dems on 11/10. Ladbrokes has both parties on evens.
Comments on this thread are closed. Please leave your comments below Lord Ashcroft's article so we avoid two threads on the same subject.