UKIP's promised big political wave may only be a ripple

LONDON — The U.K. Independence Party's pub-loving, cigarette-smoking, unabashed England-for-the-English leader Nigel Farage told Paste BN last year that his party would "rock the establishment to its core" in Thursday's election.

Now, it looks like the big political wave that the anti-immigrant, anti-European Union party leader predicted may be little more than a gentle ripple.

The latest polls show UKIP capturing around 12% of the vote in a close race between the Conservative and Labor parties to govern the United Kingdom.

That should be enough votes to tip the outcome, but under Britain's election rules, that support may not translate into actual members of Parliament who choose the next government.

In the last general election in 2010, which produced a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government headed by Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron, UKIP won 3% of the national vote and did not win a single seat in the 650-member House of Commons.

This time, UKIP is likely to win two or three seats, far fewer than its expected total vote would suggest. That's because there are so few parliamentary districts where a UKIP candidate has a chance to win the most votes to capture a seat.

In May, Farage, 51, was buoyed by his party's showing in European Union parliamentary elections that take place every five years in all 28 member states to determine which domestic parties are represented in the law-setting European Parliament.

UKIP, which favors dramatic cuts in immigration and Britain's exit from the EU, won 28% of the vote, up from 7% in 1999. It was the first time in nearly 100 years that a party other than the Conservatives or Labor won a national election. UKIP's fortunes appeared to be rising, as voters responded to Farage's call for traditional "common sense" values.

Recently, however, the party has faced a backlash for being insensitive because of Farage's comments that immigrants who are HIV positive are driving up national health costs and should be barred from seeking that help.

The party may also suffer mass desertion by right-leaning voters who may support Cameron's Conservatives to prevent Labor from forming a left-leaning government with the pro-independence Scottish National Party.

Bill Hart-French, 59, a photographer who lives here, said he thinks UKIP candidates are "going to get trashed" on Thursday because many UKIP supporters will instead vote for Cameron's party.

"And for the good of the country the best coalition for me will be the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats," he said, adding that the coalition had "worked OK."