LABOUR AND CONSERVATIVES TIED: Labour 33%, Con 33%, UKIP 17%, LD 7%, Greens 6%

My poll of polls for this week shows Labour on 33%, unchanged from last week, the Conservatives up 1 to 33%, UKIP up 1 to 17%, the Lib Dems stay where they are, and the Greens increase their support by 1% to move to 6%.

Effectively, both main parties are tied. The regional variations found previously have continued: UKIP continues to do poorly in Scotland but performs strongly in the North and South, whilst both Labour and the Tories perform strongly in their own heartland areas....apart from Scotland, where the Labour Party is doing very badly indeed. There is virtually no change, apart from Labour doing slightly worse and the Tories slightly better in the South than they were last week.

Here are the regional extrapolations:

London: Labour 39%, Conservatives 33%, UKIP 10%, Liberal Democrats 8%

The North: Labour 42%, Conservatives 27%, UKIP 20%, Lib Dems 5%

The South: Conservatives 40%, Labour 25%, UKIP 18%, Liberal Democrats 9%

Scotland: SNP 41%, Labour 27%, Conservatives 19%, Lib Dems 6%, UKIP 4%

It's perfectly conceivable that we could end up with 5 parties that have at least 10 seats each (Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats,UKIP, SNP) after the next election.

A good argument for keeping the First Past the Post electoral system, has been that it helps form strong and decisive election results, and therefore strong governments. Yet, that does not look likely to happen at this moment in time, and we are likely to see a deeply divided and fractured parliament after 2015, which reflects the deeply divided views of the people of Britain at the moment. Perhaps such a result would speed up moves toward electoral reform. Either way, the election is next May, and neither party has grasped it by the neck as of yet.