London - With a week to go until the British general election, experts are trawling through opinion poll data for some clues to a race that remains stubbornly deadlocked, and the result wide open.
Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives and the opposition Labour party have been polling within a few percentage points of each other throughout the campaign, both hovering at about 34 percent support.
If neither party moves ahead in the final week, then neither will secure a parliamentary majority and will have to negotiate with smaller parties in order to govern.
The exact make-up of the House of Commons remains difficult to predict, however, due to Britain's "winner takes all" system that means votes are decided not on the overall popular vote but on the individual outcomes in each of the 650 constituencies.
The fragmentation of British politics also makes life harder for the pollsters, as voters are increasingly ditching tribal loyalties and could change their minds on the day.
In the 2010 election, the polls were largely accurate in predicting the Conservatives' share of the vote, but all underestimated Labour's support and overestimated the third party, the Liberal Democrats.
This year one certainty is that the Scottish nationalists will win most, if not all, of the 59 seats in Scotland, up from just six in the 2010 vote.
Beyond that, experts can only agree that the result is the most unpredictable for a generation.
AFP
