Pundits and pollsters have something in common: they both get things wrong a lot. That's not because they don't know what they are doing or that they are not clever people.

They are both of those things. But pundits - also called political commentators - and pollsters both have to take what they know at a given time and try to give it meaning. With little inkling of what the future may hold, that is not always easy.

And with five weeks remaining in the General Election campaign, a lot can change.

Nonetheless, Friday's poll in the Bermuda Sun was quite revealing about the prospects of both political parties for the July 24 election.

The conventional wisdom leading into this election has been that the Progressive Labour Party will be re-elected, albeit with a smaller share of the national vote and possibly a smaller share of seats in the House of Assembly.

Recent polls have also suggested that the two parties were running quite close together, with a very large pool of voters who were still undecided.

That was interesting, because it suggested that the steady decline in the PLP's popularity in the last five years was not translating into increased support for the United Bermuda Party.

Friday's poll suggested otherwise. It showed the PLP basically treading water with about 25 percent of the vote. But the UBP's support had grown to about 34 percent, giving it a nine percent lead - the first time it has led in a poll since before the 1998 General Election.

That suggests that undecided voters are now moving towards the UBP and raises the possibility that it could win the General Election.

It may be that the UBP's campaigning to date is paying off, especially since the PLP has not done a great deal publicly since calling the Election.

However, there still remains a vast pool of undecided voters who have yet to decide how they will vote - and may not vote at all.

The other open question, as pollster Walton Brown noted, is that no one can say with very much certainty how the national poll figures will play out in the new constituencies. It has always been much harder to estimate constituency votes than national voting trends and the new constituencies, without any historical trends to consider, make predicting seat counts harder still.

What does seem clear is that this is still either party's election to win. And canvassing by the candidates could make a huge difference on election day.

Neither party has named all of its candidates yet, although most of the UBP's seem to be in place.

The PLP seems to be further behind and has not yet officially announced any candidates, although a few have gone ahead and announced themselves. Given the new electoral system and the large number of undecided voters, it would be wise for both parties to hurry up and name their candidates.