UK election still anyone's to win

Divided over the country's ballooning debt, the economy and immigration, the three front runners in Britain's general election agree on one thing: this race is anyone's to win.

Conservative challenger David Cameron, fresh off what observers said was his best live televised debate performance to date, yesterday told BBC radio that next week's national election was "far from won".

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, riding higher in the polls than most political observers ever expected, said the campaign was "wide open".

Even Britain's ever-optimistic former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who hit the campaign trail on Friday in support of his successor, Gordon Brown, could only say that their governing Labour Party "has every chance of succeeding".

An ICM/Populus poll, published on Friday by the Guardian, showed the gap between each party within the margin of error. Statistically, the three-way contest involving Cameron, Clegg and Brown has become a dead heat.

Those figures are disappointing for Cameron, whose Tories at one point enjoyed a double-digit lead over Labour, which has run the country since 1997.

But Labour managed to whittle away Cameron's advantage as the election drew closer, and both parties have been caught off-guard by Clegg, whose affable and straightforward style in the nation's first TV debate on April 15 led to a surge in support for the Liberal Democrats.

Andrew Gamble, head of Cambridge University's department of politics, said the Tories "should be winning this election by a mile".

"The fact that they're not is deeply troubling for the Conservatives," he said. "Clegg is spoiling the party for them."

Political observers said Cameron did well in Friday's debate, watched by about eight million people, although Clegg also held his own. Brown placed a distant third in a performance that politics expert John Curtice described as overly defensive.

But none of the candidates provided detailed economic recovery plans in a nation that faces major economic troubles and one of the largest deficits in Europe, both of which will require harsh cuts in public spending after the election.

Labour got more bad news when the Guardian newspaper announced its support for the Liberal Democrats and the Times backed the Tories.

The right-leaning Times' endorsement of the Conservatives was no surprise, but Labour's loss of the left-leaning Guardian was more damaging.

Curtice said the Guardian endorsement was "simply an indication of how badly Labour is doing".

Still, with the election on May 6, Brown's opponents aren't taking anything for granted.

Addressing a crowd in northern England, Clegg said he was "certainly not going to rest one millisecond, one minute until this campaign ends - right up to the moment when people decide how to vote".

"There are lots of people who haven't decided how they are going to vote," he said. "I think many people now see this campaign is wide open. It's one of the most exciting campaigns in a generation and that we can do something different."

Cameron said his party would "have to fight for every vote and every seat".

Brown, too, has pledged to take his fight down to the wire.

"We will continue to fight for the future of this country until the very last second of this election campaign."

Gamble suggested that those very last seconds could still be crucial.

"In this last week a lot of voters will be making up their minds," he said.

- AP