Nigel Farage on course to become an MP as poll shows him pulling ahead of rivals in South Thanet
The Ukip leader is on course to take the seat
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Your support makes all the difference.Nigel Farage is on course to become an MP as a new poll shows him ahead of his local rivals in South Thanet.
A survey of the Kent seat by the pollster Survation for the Daily Express newspaper found the Ukip leader 9% clear of the next most popular candidate.
Mr Farage is polling 39%, with Craig Mackinlay of the Conservative party on 30% and Will Scobie of Labour on 26%.
The Green Party candidate and Liberal Democrat candidate in the seat are both on 2% respectively.
Mr Farage stood in the area in 2005 where he won 5% of the vote. In 2010 he stood against the Speaker John Bercow in Buckingham and won 17.4% of the vote.
He told the Daily Express: “The thing that really strikes me about these figures is the number of non-voters, the people who did not engage in 2010, who have said they are going to vote Ukip. I think that is really exciting.”
Strikingly, the poll found that nearly 20% of voters living in the seat had actually met Mr Farage in person – a far higher number than would be the case with most parliamentary candidates.
The poll also revealed that Ukip had knocked on far more doors, phoned more houses, and delivered more leaflets than the other parties – illustrating the importance placed in the seat and the resources devoted to winning it.
The poll is a turnaround from a previous survey by ComRes which found Mr Farage in second place on 30% behind the Conservative candidate on 31%, with the Labour candidate trailing closely on 29%.
It is not clear whether the differences in the poll are down to a genuine shift in the race as the parties’ step up their ground game, or whether methodological differences can account for the movement.
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