The voting begins

As Michael Crick reports:

A Newsnight colleague got his postal ballot this morning. So some people will have begun voting today, two days ahead of the official start of postal voting.

And this:

In 2005, 15 per cent of all votes cast were by post. The rules are a bit tighter this time, but some analysts think the postal vote in 2010 could be as high as one in five voters.

Past experience shows that most postal voters tend to cast their ballots within only a day or two of receiving them.

So, the final phase of the campaign becomes less relevant to large proportion of voters, which needs to be factored into polls during the next twelve days.