Britain's Deputy PM Nick Clegg fights to retain seat

Britain's Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Centrist Liberal Democrat Party Nick Clegg is fighting to retain his seat in parliament and save his political career in a general election this week, according to the Economic Times.

Support for the Liberal Democrats has plummeted since the party won almost one in four votes in the 2010 election, putting them in government for the first time since 1945 as the junior coalition partner of the center-right Conservatives.

That may prove true for the Liberal Democrats, who now how have roughly eight percent support according to opinion polls, and for their leader Clegg.

A multilingual former Eurocrat, Clegg is fighting a close battle to retain his parliamentary seat in Sheffield Hallam in northern England, where an April poll showed the Labor candidate narrowly ahead.

About a third of the party's 57 seats across Britain are under threat in Thursday's election.

But with no party expected to win a majority in the May 7 vote, the remaining Liberal Democrats may still be needed to prop up a government led by either the Conservatives or their rivals, the centre-left Labour party of Ed Miliband.

Clegg, 48, has indicated he will speak first to whichever party wins the most seats and has vowed to anchor the next government to the center ground by tempering Conservative cuts and Labor borrowing.

"If you don't want to run the risk of our country lurching to the right, lurching to the left, the only way to guarantee to keep our country on track is to vote Liberal Democrat," Clegg said in a rallying campaign speech at a cricket club in southern England.