The tightest race in a generation has every campaign rethinking its ground game.

The first wave of polling for next year’s Assembly election shows the three largest parties separated by just four points, the narrowest spread at this stage of a campaign since the Assembly was created. An average of five surveys published over the past three weeks puts the Civic Alliance on 27 per cent, Commonweal on 25 and the Valley Liberals on 23, with smaller parties and independents sharing the remaining quarter of the vote.

If those figures were repeated on polling day, analysts say, none of the three would come close to a majority of the 61 seats, and the arithmetic of forming a government would depend heavily on the smaller parties and on the two independents who currently represent hill-town constituencies.

A volatile electorate

The polls suggest an unusually large number of voters have yet to make up their minds. Between a fifth and a quarter of respondents in each survey said they did not know how they would vote, and many of those who did express a preference said they could still change it. That uncertainty is greatest among younger voters and in the outer suburbs of Calder, where several seats were won by margins of fewer than three hundred votes last time.

Regional differences are also sharp. The Civic Alliance leads comfortably in the centre of Calder and in Port Selwyn, where housing and transport have dominated its campaign. Commonweal is strongest in Harrow and the eastern wards of the city. The Valley Liberals run well ahead in Ardle and the market towns, and have narrowed the gap in the hill towns, though both incumbent independents there still lead in constituency polling.

“A national lead of two or three points tells you very little about seats in a race like this. It is the marginal wards – maybe a dozen of them – that will decide who governs. Every campaign knows that, and every campaign is now redrawing its map,” said Professor Edwin Marchetti-Rowe, a political scientist who advises a polling cooperative.

Professor Marchetti-Rowe cautioned that early polls had a mixed record in Assembly elections, and that the final result could look very different after the formal campaign begins in the spring.

Rethinking the ground game

All three main parties have responded by shifting resources towards local, door-to-door campaigning in the seats they consider most winnable. Campaign managers who spoke to this newspaper described plans to concentrate volunteers in a smaller number of wards rather than spreading them evenly, and to begin canvassing in earnest before Christmas rather than waiting for the new year.

The Civic Alliance has opened two new campaign offices, in Harrow Light and in the western suburbs of Calder, and says it has recruited around four hundred new volunteers since the summer. Commonweal is investing in phone banks and in a programme of street stalls at markets and transport hubs. The Valley Liberals, who have the smallest budget of the three, are focusing on postal-vote sign-ups among older voters in the valley, where turnout is traditionally high.

A campaign coordinator for one of the parties, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the polls had “torn up” the original plan. “Six months ago we thought we knew which seats were safe. Now there are about fifteen we can’t take for granted, and about ten we think we can win that we weren’t even looking at,” she said.

Issues and coalitions

The surveys suggest the cost of living, housing and the health service remain the most important issues for voters, followed by public transport and the state of the region’s roads. Asked which party they trusted most on each, voters split almost as evenly as on the headline question, with no party holding a clear advantage on more than one issue.

Questions about possible coalitions are likely to dominate the coming months. Leaders of all three main parties have so far refused to rule partners in or out, though the Valley Liberals have said they would not support any government that did not commit to reopening the closed rail line through the valley. The two hill-town independents, Margit Haldane and Rhys Okonjo, have said they will decide nothing until after the votes are counted.

The next round of published polling is expected in mid-December. The election is due to be held in May.