Lib Dem Voice doesn’t do polls. But if it did, we would draw readers’ attention to two rather different recent surveys of opinion.
On Friday, Populus suggested a surge for UKIP — who would relegate Labour to third place and leave the Lib Dems fighting it out with the Green party for fourth place.
Sunday’s papers will bring a new ICM poll putting us at 25% at Westminster and 20% in the European elections – in both cases relegating Labour to third place in the popular vote.
Are they both outliers? Political Betting’s sage Mike Smithson offers a possible explanation for the reversed fortunes of UKIP and the Lib Dems in these polls:
My guess is that unlike Populus ICM did not prompt with the minor party names.
If he’s right, Liberal Democrat members should keep the real ale on ice until real votes are counted. Voters will have minor parties’ names in front of them when they cast votes this Thursday.
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That may be right and the truth may lie somewhere in between tehse polls – but it’s still fun and will put a bounce in the step of all our activists at teh right time.
For those of us with CC elections both these polls offer real optimism. I am looking forward to seeing lots of people voting UKIP and LD at the same time!
Tony Greaves
Real ale on ice? Philistinism!
At last, Clegg is starting to say the right things about expenses, and the public are beginning to take notice. “Scrap the summer recess” was a great line. The priority has to be tackling the scandal itself, and punishing the guilty. (And also, not just letting Cameron and Brown get away with scapegoating expendable people whose misdemeanours are less serious). That’s what the public want.
Iain – I know.
I was thinking of “put the flavoured sparkling water on ice” but more Lib Dems I know are CAMRA members than drink over-priced fizzy water. 
Ha, glad to see that we are beating Labour back and seeing the Liberal party begin to retake its rightful place as one of the two main parties! We’ve waited nearly 100 years for this;)
Havnig spent most of last night trying to prove to a friend that his prescription of cold fizzy lager for hot weather was just “wrong” and that some rather fine and warm beer in the Lamb & Flag was the better option, I’m so glad Iain got in there first with that little observation.
Methinks our former colonial friends across the pond are making you a bit soft, Richard! Ale on ice indeed – and from a university whose mascot is a British bulldog to boot!
“If he’s right, Liberal Democrat members should keep the real ale on ice until real votes are counted. Voters will have minor parties’ names in front of them when they cast votes this Thursday.”
But on the other hand, few of them will see UKIP, Green or BNP tellers on their way into the polling station. Or get anything but the free postal delivery from those parties.
Oh I don’t know. I lose track of the number of “People like you” BNP leaflets I’ve had – not even had a freepost from the Lib Dems. This is the worrying thing, the places the BNP and to a lesser extent UKIP and the Greens will prosper are the places where we have no infrastructure on the ground and no way of seeing their activity or combatting it.
I almost wept on moving back to the West Midlands (actually that sentence could stop right there) and finding that no local party across the nearest three local authorities was doing anything more than their usual ward Focus and most were doing the sum total of nowt and bog all.
Some more polls:
YouGov for the Daily Telegraph, 1 June:
CON 39%(nc)
LAB 22%(-1)
LDEM 18%(-1)
MORI, 1 June:
CON 40%(-1)
LAB 18%(-10)
LDEM 18%(-4)
ComRes for the Independent, 2 June:
CON 30%(-10)
LAB 22%(+1)
LDEM 18%(nc)
And for the European elections:
YouGov for the Daily Telegraph, 1 June:
CON 27%(+1)
LAB 17%(-4)
LDEM 15%(+1)
UKIP 16%(nc)
Green 9%(nc)
BNP 7%(nc)
SNP & PC 4%
Others 6%
ComRes for the Green Party, 2 June:
CON 24%
LAB 22%
LDEM 14%
UKIP 17%
Green 15%
BNP 2%
(NB Anthony Wells on UK Polling Report urges caution on this one, in case there’s something funny about the question.)
There’s a useful discussion of the final polls for the European elections by Anthony Wells on UK Polling Report:
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2162