Why Corby wants to punish the Tories Almost everyone thinks that on November 15, at least, Corby will not choose the Tories. A poll by the party's former treasurer, Lord Ashcroft, gives Labour's Andy Sawford a 22-point lead. In more than 20 interviews, done entirely in the Conservative parts of the constituency, The Sunday Telegraph found only three voters who intended to vote Tory. Even the people running the Conservative campaign - though not Mrs Emmett herself - more or less openly say that they will lose. But for the Prime Minister, there is a further dimension of pain. To many Tories, and Tory voters, Louise Mensch symbolised everything that was wrong with his Conservative Party: metropolitan, privileged, aloof, lacking firmness and staying-power. For one anti-Cameron MP, not working on the campaign, the "unnecessary" by-election was a direct consequence of his decision, through the much-disliked A-list, to parachute a "fish out of water" into this shire seat. Talking to people in the constituency's Tory heartland, it was striking how much dislike of their former MP, as much as the unpopularity of the Government, appeared to be driving things. "I'm a true-blue Conservative and I'm not going to vote for them," said one woman, a teacher at Oundle School, in the local hardware shop. To leave before your term is up is a breach of your promise. I was her neighbour for over a year and if I saw her in the street she would never even acknowledge me. Again and again, in this polite Tory country town, people brought up this charge - that they never saw Mensch, or when they did she was unfriendly. Even the estate agent she approached to value her constituency home, Chris Woodford, said: "It had an air of abandonment about it. We gave her quite a bit of advice about tidying it up and sorting it out. The house, in the village of Lowick, is now on with another agency for £415,000 - "more than we think it's worth," says Mr Woodford. I don't think she's famous enough to add value. The market here is static. You watch, it'll still be for sale in the spring. Chris Woodford is another lifelong Tory voter jumping ship this week - to Ukip, in his case, along with one of his staff and his wife. "We have to do something about immigration and the EU," he said. We sell a lot of properties to people from Peterborough [the nearest large town.] They say they feel like the ethnic minority now. UKIP's Margot Parker is using the campaign manager who managed to drive the Tories into third place in the Barnsley Central by-election last March. Coming third in Corby really would be catastrophic for the Conservatives, but still looks quite unlikely: they have a much bigger bedrock vote here than in Barnsley, and when it comes to elections Ukip have a long history of failing to get their act together. Still, Mrs Emmett is sufficiently worried about her starboard flank to stress her backing for Britain's withdrawal from the EU. It is notable, too, that many of the MPs coming to help her are from the right of the party. Her campaign manager, Chris Heaton-Harris, says pointedly: "We are running a very Conservative campaign." On the same day as the by-election, the Tories also appear to be headed for some fairly poor showings at the England and Wales-wide police and crime commissioner polls. Sam Chapman, a Conservative councillor whose Top Of The Cops website is the best source on the elections, predicts that the Tories are only certain to win 14 of the 41 commissionerships, with Labour getting at least 19 and the other eight too close to call. So come Friday, will the sharks again be circling Dave? Oddly enough, the widespread belief that the Tories will be crushed in Corby might help him. In politics, it's not just how you perform - it's how you perform against expectations, and the Tories" expectation management operation has been in full swing for weeks. The aim of the party's downbeat predictions, and the publicity given to the Ashcroft poll, is to make even a fairly bad defeat look unsurprising and a modest defeat look like a tolerable result. Expect the "Mensch factor" to loom large in Tory excuses, too. It is certainly true that some, though far from all, of those not voting Conservative this week in protest at their former MP said they would probably return to the fold at the next general election. And despite Tory activists" and MPs" general lack of enthusiasm for Cameron, the campaign is making quite heavy use of him in its literature and sound bites. As the polls, both for the by-election and nationally, show, the Prime Minister remains an asset to the party, still ahead of Ed Miliband. The Tories do not seem to have adopted a core-vote strategy in the by-election. Their literature mostly stresses jobs and other issues of interest to the economically harder-pressed parts of the seat (they've even done a booklet advising Corby's many young jobseekers how to present themselves at interview). That is wise. But the party should still be deeply worried by the core-vote disillusionment expressed in places like Oundle.