Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Conservative Leader David Cameron pledged to work “night and day” to win a majority in Parliament at the next U.K. election as an opinion poll suggested his party may fail to clinch enough lawmaker seats.

The Ipsos Mori poll in the Observer newspaper today showed Cameron’s party with a six-point lead, the narrowest since December and a result that would leave it 35 seats short of a majority. The Conservatives had support from 37 percent of voters, the ruling Labour Party had 31 percent and the Liberal Democrats had 17 percent in the survey.

Cameron needs a lead of about 10 percentage points to win a clear majority, according to Anthony Wells of pollsters YouGov Plc. A minority government, known as a “hung parliament,” may face greater difficulty in tackling Britain’s record budget deficit.

“Anything would be better than another five years of this Labour government but I am working night and day not for a hung parliament but for a majority government,” Cameron said in a television interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show today. “I’ve got another six months to really try and prove it to people and that’s what needs to be done.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is battling to revive the economy in time for the election, due by June. The Observer poll is the second out of 30 completed since the start of October to suggest a lead for the Conservatives of less than 10 percentage points, data compiled on Wells’s Web site show.

Opinion ‘Volatility’

“There’s tremendous volatility in public opinion at the moment,” George Young, a Conservative lawmaker, told Sky News. Still, “any complacency that there may have been in my party will have been put on one side by the poll in the Observer.”

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg told the Andrew Marr show that the poll demonstrated the next election isn’t a “shoo-in.” His opposition party may become pivotal to securing a majority if the election ends in a hung parliament.

“Whichever party -- whether it’s the Liberal Democrats, Labour or the Conservatives -- has the strongest mandate from the British people, it seems to me obvious in a democracy they have the first right to seek to try and govern either on their own or with others,” he said.

William Hill Plc, the U.K.’s second-largest bookmaker, today cut its odds for a hung parliament from 3-1 to 5-2, meaning a successful 2-pound ($3.30) bet would now yield a profit of 5 pounds instead of 6 pounds previously.

Sex Divide

Female voters tend to be less likely than men to support the Conservatives, according to analysis of ComRes Ltd. polls in the past five months published in the Independent on Sunday today. It shows support among male voters at 41 percent, an 18- point lead over Labour, while 38 percent of women favor the Conservatives, an 11-point lead.

Brown’s prospects have improved after the recession abated. Forty-three percent of voters expected the economy to perform better in the next year, 23 percent said it will worsen and 27 percent said it will stay the same, the poll showed. Ipsos Mori questioned 1,006 people by telephone from Nov. 13 to Nov. 15, the Observer said.

“People recognize the extraordinary leadership that Gordon Brown has given in dealing with the recession,” Environment Secretary Hilary Benn told Sky News. “We have to deal with whatever comes, but we’ll be fighting the election to win and I think there’s everything to fight for.”

Cameron told the BBC today that he plans to deliver an “emergency budget” which “goes for growth” within 50 days of winning the election. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development last week urged Britain to do more to mend public finances as data showed the deficit in October was the worst for the month since records began in 1993.

To contact the reporter on this story: Craig Stirling in London at cstirling1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 22, 2009 10:07 EST