A quarter of voters face poll, uncertain who to choose

LONDON - The British-born ethnic Kurd who runs my late-night North London corner shop, Bekir, weighed my bananas at 11pm, eight hours before the polling booths opened, and declared himself part of the quarter of the electorate still undecided how their votes would be cast.

It is one of the highest percentages of undecided voters so close to election day that the pollsters have recorded and means that they all agree this election is too unpredictable to call, except to say that Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair is likely to win.

An NOP poll for the Independent put the undecided figure at 27 per cent.

As electioneering ended, the last polls showed the position of the parties nationally to be little changed, with Blair holding about 40 per cent and set for a third huge majority of roughly 100 seats, Conservative Party leader Michael Howard still on about 36 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 22 to 24 per cent, depending on which newspaper's poll you choose.

But received wisdom is that the national poll masks local truths, which could provide serious upsets as the results come in today.

The dilemma facing my 36-year-old shopkeeper is that, as a member of one of North London's many ethnic minorities, he is a lifelong Labour voter and he has as his sitting MP in Islington North Jeremy Corbyn, a very good "old-fashioned cuddly leftie", as one piece of analysis put it - a 55-year-old with an impeccable record both as a hard-working constituency MP and as a Labour backbencher.

He has consistently voted against the Iraq war and against all the Blairite privatisation initiatives. A regular pain in the Blair flesh.

But whatever Blair feels about Corbyn personally, in the Labour number-crunching machine today, votes cast for Corbyn will be counted as votes for Blair.

That my shopkeeper cannot stomach.

"It is the war. I can't look as if I have voted for Blair, because of the war."

That sentiment is echoed everywhere in Islington, which was Blair's home area until the 1997 election translated him to Downing St. And it continues to reverberate nationwide.

In Orpington, Kent - a seat that the LibDems have won before - Jenny Turrell, a teacher whose father was a trade unionist, said she would be voting LibDem, as would her husband. Her father, in Norwich, was saying the same.

Similarly in Herefordshire, a rural and deeply Conservative area that houses the headquarters of the SAS, voters are under-impressed by Howard and desperate to avoid casting a vote that will help Blair.

Howard is failing to attract unquestioning support even in solidly wealthy areas on the fringes of London, where generations of the well-bred have been loyal Conservative cannon fodder.

His Welsh background causes some angst, although not the sort that is likely to switch voters to another party.

If this area protests, it will be by staying home and letting a low turnout give the message.

All of this was putting a lift into the steps of the LibDem leader, Charles Kennedy. If the polls are right, Kennedy's party should pick up 20 or so seats, not enough to make him Prime Minister, but enough to make the Prime Minister court his goodwill and votes.

Election day

Polls opened at 7am (6pm NZ time) on Thursday
Polls close at 10pm on Thursday (9am Friday NZ time)
Results should be known between midday and mid-afternoon Friday NZ time
For coverage of the UK election go to nzherald.co.nz/ukelection