Yer Pays Yer Money, Yer Tykes Yer Choice

Psephology, as guessing elections is called in Britain, is about as inexact an art as playing the football pools. Faced with a general election this year or next, the experts last week studied a rich crop of auguries with unusual diligence and the usual results: they disagreed.

Certainly, there was little to encourage Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's Conservatives in the outcome of 401 local borough elections. With 2,973 seats at stake, the Tories lost a total of 550; the Labor Party gained 544, winning control of local governments in such major cities as Leicester, Liverpool, Bradford, Bristol and Nottingham. Labor officials claimed that if a general election were held tomorrow, they would return to power with a margin of 90 to 130 seats.

Also last week, however, three separate opinion polls indicated that Labor's lead has shortened dramatically in the past month. A Daily Mail survey estimated that Tory support has increased a startling 7% since April. The Daily Telegraph Gallup poll reported a 2.5% gain for the Conservatives, whose support is now estimated at 36.5%, to Labor's 46.5%.

The clues were not quite as contradictory as they seemed. Council elections in Britain generally mirror local economic conditions. While Tory candidates were hurt by high unemployment levels in many big cities, they also took a beating in many prosperous suburban communities where householders were still cross with the government for recently increasing their local taxes (from 50% to 300%). National opinion polls, which in the past have proved fairly accurate, apparently reflected Britons' satisfaction with a new head of steam that has begun to appear in the economy. Torn between contradictory portents, psephologists and politicians were about equally divided on whether the general election will be held this fall or next year.

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