London: Two new polls Sunday pointed to an indecisive result in Britain's upcoming election, with one suggesting the ruling Labour Party would emerge as the biggest party and the other giving the edge to opposition Conservatives.
A YouGov poll for the Sunday Times showed the centre-right Conservatives with a four-point lead over Labour, down one point from a week earlier.
The poll of just over 1,500 people put the Conservatives on 37 per cent ahead of Labour on 33 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 17 per cent.
If repeated at the election widely expected on May 6, it would give Labour 302 seats in parliament against 277 for the Conservatives, the newspaper said. Neither party would have an outright majority.
Financial markets fear a minority or coalition government would be reluctant to take the strong action investors want to cut Britain's budget deficit, forecast to reach £178 billion ($270 billion) this year, more than 12 per cent of GDP.
Markets punished the pound earlier this month after a poll showed Labour could stay in power but without a clear majority.
The Conservatives are bidding to end 13 years of Labour rule. But polls increasingly point to a hung parliament, in which no party has a majority, for the first time since 1974.
Labour needs a smaller percentage of the national vote than the Conservatives do to win a majority because its vote is concentrated in urban constituencies, which tend to have smaller electorates than rural areas.
A second poll, by ICM for The Sunday Telegraph, showed the Conservative lead dropping to seven points from nine last month.
The survey of just over 1,000 people put the Conservatives on 38 per cent, ahead of Labour on 31 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 21. The Conservative lead equalled its lowest in any ICM poll for the last two years.
