Author Archives: Stephen Tall

All this week, Lib Dem Voice is publishing the results of our September survey of party members conducted through Liberty Research via our private members’ forum. This is the second of our monthly surveys – if you have ideas for future survey questions, please email me at [email protected].

Today we turn our attention to the performance of Nick Clegg as leader, and whether party members think the Lib Dems are on the right/wrong track.

To try and gauge how representative LDV’s online community might be of the wider membership we first asked: How did you vote in the 2007 Lib …

All this week, Lib Dem Voice is publishing the results of our September survey of party members conducted through Liberty Research via our private members’ forum. This is the second of our monthly surveys – if you have ideas for future survey questions, please email me at [email protected].

Today we look at party members’ expectations of the result of the next general election, which has to be called within the next 18 months or so. According to LDV’s most recent polling analysis the current state of the parties is this: Tories, 46%; Labour, 26%; Lib Dems 17%.

LDV …

All this week, Lib Dem Voice is publishing the results of our September survey of party members conducted through Liberty Research via our private members’ forum. This is the second of our monthly surveys – if you have ideas for future survey questions, please email me at [email protected].

Today we publish the results of the first poll asking how Lib Dem members might vote in the event of a contested election for the party presidency.

LDV asked: Any member of the Liberal Democrats is eligible to stand for the Lib Dem presidency: they do not have to be a Parliamentarian. Three candidates …

All this week, Lib Dem Voice will be publishing the results of our September survey of party members conducted through Liberty Research via our private members’ forum. This is the second of our monthly surveys – if you have ideas for future survey questions, please email me at [email protected].

We began by asking about the party presidency. Every two years, the Lib Dem party membership has the opportunity to elect a Party President, and Simon Hughes MP has been party president since 2004. His term of office ends this year, and a ballot will take place this autumn to elect his successor.

LDV asked: What do you think the main role of the President should be?

Here’s how you rated the four options on offer:

* To become a known face in the media representing the Lib Dem position on the TV and radio news. 12.5%
* To tour the country visiting constituency parties, listening to members, and representing their views to the Parliamentary party. 45.8%
* To become a senior behind-the-scenes figure, chairing key policy and organisation committees, balancing the wishes of the membership and the leadership. 33.3%
* To lead the party’s fundraising among the membership and wealthy supporters, ensuring the party is on the best possible election footing. 8.3%

Of course none of the options are mutually exclusive, and doubtless many members will be looking to the presidential candidates to spell out how they will achieve all four of them (and more) if elected. But it was interesting to note that the role felt most fitting for the president should be to ‘rally the troops’ up and down the country; though the desire of members to see the president full involved with policy formulation was not far behind. Neither the PR nor the fundraising aspects to the job were felt by members in this survey to be of prime importance.

LDV then asked: How effective do you think Simon has been as party president?

Here’s what you told us:

Very effective: 9.4%
Quite effective: 15.6%
Okay: 34.4%
Quite ineffective: 27.1%
Very ineffective: 13.5%

Simon’s tenure as Lib Dem president has attracted a fair amount of critical muttering around the blogosphere, so he may be reasonably gratified to discover that 59% of LDV members (who are a pretty hard-nosed bunch) rated his performance as okay or better. Of course, that still leaves 41% who felt his performance had been ineffective to one degree or another.

To drill-down a little further LDV then asked: What do you think has been Simon’s greatest achievement or failure during his time as party president?

Some 60% of those who completed the survey chose to answer this. Most were critical, chiefly of Simon’s unfulfilled pledge to double the Lib Dem membership – though events largely beyond his control haven’t exactly assisted him for the past three years. Here’s some of what you said: