Polls Show UK's Theresa May in the Fight of Her Life

Britain's ruling Conservative Party once lead the polls with double digits. But as Thurday's election was closing in, that lead had become razor thin. Prime Minister Theresa May's chances of victory in the United Kingdom's most closely watched race continue to dwindle. 

Recent tragic events would seem to bolster her chances, if history has a say. But nothing seems predictable, given the recent poll numbers.

Traditionally, the brutal terrorist attack in London Sunday morning would rally British voters behind May’s ruling Conservative Party in the general election. Conservatives have a stronger reputation for law and order than the opposition Labour Party, and, historically, voters stand with the party or candidate already in charge in times like these.

But this has not been the case in the United Kingdom in light of the attack that claimed eight  lives with 48 injured. “There’s no evidence at all that the attack in London last weekend has moved the dial toward the Conservatives,” Ben Page, director of the much-respected Ipsos MORI poll, told Newsmax on Wednesday.

A June 2 Ipsos MORI poll showed the Conservatives leading Labour by a margin of 45 percent to 40 percent.  This could easily mean that the Conservatives would fall short of a majority in the 650-seat House of Commons.  (With Ipsos Mori’s final poll expected out Thursday afternoon, sources say it will continue to show Conservatives falling from the 15-point advantage they held over Labour in polls two weeks ago.)

A poll conducted by Survation just before the attack showed an even tighter race: Conservatives 41.5 percent to Labour’s 40.4 percent, with 6 percent going to the Liberal Democratic Party and 3 percent to the anti-European Union United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). 

The reason fighting terrorism has not taken off as an issue for May and her party is that, according to Page, “9/11 was a more dramatic and very large-scale attack on a Western capital. But we had the notorious ‘7/7 bombing,’ in which suicide bombers [on July 7, 2005] targeted civilians using public transport during rush hour and killed 52. So the attack in London Saturday and in Manchester attack on a concert in May [which took the lives of 22 people] are, as horrible as they are, taken as a part of life.”

Page added that because young people hear Labour’s far-left leader Jeremy Corbyn talk of a free education or raising taxes on big business, “his numbers go up on the assumption that there will be a larger-than-usual turnout among the young.  I don’t really see that, however.”

British historian Graham Stewart was critical of Corbyn: “Labour is led by Corbyn, who opposed every significant piece of anti-terrorism legislation throughout his parliamentary career, who spent decades hobnobbing with the IRA, has described Hamas as his 'friends,' and who laid a wreath at the grave of one of the Munich Olympics terrorists."

Stewart, author of “Burying Caesar,” about the rivalry between Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain, told me that “voters who are leaning towards Labour primarily because they would like higher public spending and/or because they are young people who like Jeremy Corbyn's Bernie Sanders' style socialism, have simply decided to filter out the Labour leadership's record on terrorism matters so that they don't have to face up to the reality of the man they want to vote for other policy reasons.”

Conservative attacks on Corbyn's record are, Stewart noted,” either glibly dismissed as digging up ancient history, or in poor taste by attempting to make political capital out of terrorist tragedy. Truly, there is no persuading people who choose to close their ears.”

The polls showing Labour within striking distance of the Conservatives are almost always based on the assumption that under-30 voters will turnout at levels of 80 to 90 percent. This would be a historical first in modern British voting. As Page and other pollsters point out, the turnout among the under-30 voters for the Brexit initiative last year was less than 30 percent.

Page was clear on Corbyn's chances: “Possible, but highly unlikely.”