Not so sure about Winchester (excellent candidate in Martin Tod but I’d place more money on holding Eastleigh next door) and Romsey will be difficult (Sandra Gidley did very well to hold on last time).

Expect Labour to lose Portsmouth North to the Tories (notional Tory seat on new boundaries anyway) while both Southampton seats could also go from Labour to Tory. Much could depend on who best targets resources into the right areas. Those of us living in unwinnable neighbouring constituencies should go and help where we can have most effect… though with local elections likely to be on the same day that might hamper the amount of help we can offer elsewhere.

At the last election we gained seats from Labour on swings of up to what, 12%? But those seats (including Manchester Withington and Cardiff Central, for example) would not have been classed as ‘marginals’.

So seats we are working very hard in like Bradford East and Hull North would not come within the definition of ‘key marginals’ for the purposes of this poll, but may actually be more winnable than some of those that are included.

Frankly, I’m getting rather pissed off at the likes of Ashcroft, Sainsbury and friends bunging bribes… It makes me so angry that I’ll just have to go find some Tory MP taking their seat for granted…

That’s not to say there’s nothing for us to learn here, but it’s unsurprising if the survey leaves out our own top target seats, since many of them will likely be unwinnable for the Tories, so there’s little point them paying for polling in them.

This question has been asked at every election I can remember. However in the past the “agree” %age was much higher – IIRC over 50%.

It seems like the more credible we become (in terms of MPs won), more people think we can win, but fewer people will vote for us if they think we can win. A bit counter-intuitive but that’s the only way I can read it.

The other way of looking at that is that under AV, if people thought we could win everywhere, we might lose everywhere

@Joe Taylor “We’d have to trip over our own shoelaces not to win Edinburgh South, Islington South, and Oxford East from Labour.”

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Bridget
IS&F

I’m affraid that I don’t have a great understanding of economics but there is an arguement that it tax on property should’nt be replaced by taxes on income during a recession and I seem to recall somone saying in an interview that local income tax would take longer to calibrate.

As for changes in policy, could peaple take us seriosly if we didn’t produce any policy at all until the election or rigidly stick to a discredited policy, the other parties might get away with this to some extent but thats not a good thing. We may have to agree to disagree but i think that producing policy but being open to changing it is the most mature approch, even if it isn’t perfect.

How do you interpret the response to such a loaded question? How many of the 37% would vote Lib Dem regardless? How many of the 48% wouldn’t? I answer YouGov polls and I get frustrated with these questions as I’m really not sure what I’m being asked… in this example, should I agree, because I would? Or disagree, because the clause given is not WHY I would?

I do not think it is unduly pessimistic I think it is realistic. The risk is of a big squeeze next year by a resurgent Tories and a desperate Labour Party and this is why we need to have equi-distance between both parties and take both parties on.

Still, it’s reasonably positive, considering you can still find polls showing us wiped out to 22 seats.

Also, it is not a single policy. The Lib Dem energy policy is aso crazy as outlined by Phil Woolas very recently. Here is another example where the Lib Dems have changed their minds (on the nuclear issue) and to have no serious understanding of the impending energy shortfall. I could of course also mention the income tax U turn in recent times (50%). How do you expect the electorate to take you seriously when there such inconsistent reversals of policy?

Also Solihull is technically not a loss as it is notionally Tory on the new boundaries.

LostLibDem has a point and he/she is not alone as in the poll on this forum others had the same view.

Personally I like the policy but it will play badly in some of the seats we hold and are challenging in as it will be seen as counter-aspirational. However it is still the right thing to do. As is a local income tax and that played badly for us last time as the Tories were able to lie and mislead about it.

How some people can call it “Tory biased” is beyond me. It is a poll conducted by a respected organisation where the methodology and rationale is fully publicised as to how they arrived at their conclusions. It is not in their interests to skew the poll in favour of one party or the other. To accuse it of bias simply because it does not show this seat or that seat going to us is stupid. The Tories could make the same claim about a seat like Carshalton and Wallington.

@”Lost LibDem” as I understand it the mansion tax is an emergency measure which would only remain in place until the local income tax can be implemented. At any rate you’ll never find anyone to vote for if you judge them based soley on your impressions of a single policy, besides its not as if labour or the tories want to gt rid of the council tax.

Or is this just a form of trolling and you don’t actualy give a **** about property tax.