What the public thinks of… Cameron & Clegg for ditching Lords reform & boundary changes & of the Lib Dems in Coalition

By Stephen Tall | Mon 20th August 2012 - 7:55 pm

Here’s four intriguing findings from a ComRes poll for the Mirror and Independent released yesterday and conducted 15th-16 August…

By 34%-29% public thinks Cameron was WRONG to abandon House of Lords reform

Q: Do you agree or disagree that David Cameron was right to abandon the attempt to make changes to the House of Lords?

Interestingly 21% of Conservative voters disagreed with their party leader’s decision. Also interesting: the views of Labour and Lib Dem voters on this question were near-identical, disagreeing with David Cameron’s decision to pull the plug on the Coalition Agreement’s promised Lords reform by 2:1 margin.

By 31%-29% public thinks Nick Clegg was RIGHT to veto boundary changes

Q: Do you agree or disagree that Nick Clegg was right to say that Liberal Democrat MPs will vote against the plans to reduce the number of MPs and change constituency boundaries?

In spite of all the opprobrium that’s been thrown at the Lib Dem leader over the past fortnight by right-wing commentators (‘tantrum, betrayal, treachery etc’) his decision to go toe-to-toe with David Cameron, blocking boundary changes in response to the Tories torpedoing Lords reform, has not upset voters — in fact a narrow plurality of those with a view think he was in the right.

By 61%-18% the public don’t think the Coalition has shown the Lib Dems to be a credible party of government

Q: Do you agree or disagree that being in coalition with the Conservatives has shown the Liberal Democrats to be a credible party of government?

For many of us who back the Coalition, the hope was that whatever unpopularity the party would acquire from being in government it would at least gain gravitas in the eyes of the public. Well, I don’t have an equivalent pre-Coalition figure to hand, but it’s hard to see this result in an optimistic light. The figure of 61% disagreeing includes almost half (49%) of those who say they voted Lib Dem in 2010.

By 43%-35% the public doesn’t prefer a Lib Dem / Labour coalition to the current Lib/Con Coalition

Q: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement, ‘I would prefer Labour and the Liberal Democrats to form a government rather than the present coalition between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats’?

The current Coalition may not be popular, but there’s little clamour for the Lib Dems to align with Labour instead. Nor is this the result of Labour voters spurning Lib Dems in revenge: almost three-quarters (73%) of Labour voters would like the two parties to team up. So too would a bare majority (51%) of the Lib Dems’ 2010 voters. But an overwhelming majority (88%) of Tory voters oppose the idea, and a plurality (40% to 36%) of current Lib Dem voters don’t like it either.

* Stephen was Editor (and Co-Editor) of Liberal Democrat Voice from 2007 to 2015, and writes at The Collected Stephen Tall.

Read more by Stephen Tall or more about comres.
This entry was posted in Polls.

6 Comments

Tony Dawson 20th Aug '12 - 9:53pm

Surely, the obvious conclusion is that most people couldn’t give a monkeys?
Andrew Suffield 21st Aug '12 - 7:39am

The “credible party of government” question has split along party lines, which means it’s being answered as “which party do you support?”

Where is the column for people who have no party association?
William Hobhouse 21st Aug '12 - 9:10am

Coalition Government is better government. That’s what we have to demonstrate to the electorate. Not easy to do given that both our political opponents are making the opposite argument.
DGN 21st Aug '12 - 9:13am

The killer result is that 68% don’t agree with “…….the Coalition has shown the Lib Dems to be a credible party of government…..”. As I understand it, the LibDems’ desire to prove their fitness for government was a big factor in their entering the Coalition. It will be interesting, to put it mildly, to see what happens in the Corby by-election. Mrs Mensch’s decision to go (she is perfectly entitled to do whatever she wants in this regard) has done Messrs Cameron and Clegg no favours.
DGN 21st Aug '12 - 9:21am

William Hobhouse. “Coalition Government is better government”. Your are entitled to your opinion, but from what I am seeing Coalition government, at present, is pretty awful. Might I cite the antics over the NHS as an example of dreadful governance. And I think that British voters are likely to agree with my sentiments. The good people of Corby will soon give us an indication of the Coalition’s popularity. Real people with real votes.
peter 21st Aug '12 - 11:15am

agree with previous three comments, but remember it is still a ComRes poll, produced and paid for by a newspaper, conducted when lots of people are on holiday, – they probably asked as a first question ‘which party did you vote for the last time you voted’ and then for the sake of simplicity excluded all the ‘others’ and the ‘non voters’. Interesting, but hardly a conclusive set of stats to base any decisions upon.