The new conventional wisdom at Westminster is that the Conservatives are heading for an overall majority at the next election, and that the Liberal Democrats are therefore bound to take a pounding. On this view, the Lib Dems’ fortunes are inextricably linked with Labour and we are supposed to lose seats as we did when the Conservatives won in 1951, 1970 and 1979.
I don’t believe a word of it. After each Liberal Democrat advance – in 1997, 2001 and now 2005 – the commentariat has written our obituary. But we went on to increase our seats at the next election. We can and will do the same again.
The politics, the party and the electoral arithmetic are all fundamentally different to the previous periods of Labour to Tory swing. Unlike 1979, we are not associated with the Lib-Lab pact propping up an unpopular Labour government or the Thorpe scandal.
Unlike 1951 and 1970, we are major political players with 63 MPs instead of 6. We have a fifth of all councillors controlling big cities like Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield.
Our poll ratings have recovered since the beginning of the leadership contest, when they averaged 13 per cent. We have recently averaged 17 per cent, better than at the same time of the electoral cycle in two of the last three parliaments. It is a good platform from which to make our usual advance during an election campaign when the media have to give us fair time.
The seductive danger of the conventional wisdom is that it was right once. The Liberal Democrats’ electoral battlegrounds used to be overwhelmingly with the Conservatives even after 1997. As Professor John Curtice wrote then:
“The Liberal Democrat party is still heavily dependent for its success on it being the Conservatives rather than Labour who are unpopular. Labour/Liberal Democrat contests barely exist. There are just seven seats where the Liberal Democrats came second and were within 30 per cent of Labour in first place”.
All that has changed, which is why Nick Clegg recently announced a new targeting strategy to go after 50 Labour seats. As Professor Curtice pointed out in his analysis of the 2005 election, there is now a big electoral battlefield with Labour. We won twelve Labour seats in 2005, and can now win many more. We can now make gains from both Labour and the Tories.
Mr Curtice said: “These advances in Labour-held territory have two important implications for the party’s future prospects. The first is that it is now significantly less vulnerable to any future swing from Labour to Conservative. Because hitherto the party’s best prospects have been so heavily concentrated in Conservative territory, the party stood to suffer significant net losses if there was a swing from Labour to the Conservatives, even if its own vote held steady. Now this is far less the case”.
Look at the electoral arithmetic of the new boundaries, and make that conventional assumption that the Tories win an overall majority. They would have achieved a 6.9 per cent swing from Labour, nearly half as large again as the biggest post-war swing to the Conservatives of 5.3 per cent. Such a big swing seems unlikely given that 1979 saw the winter of discontent, rubbish in the streets, and corpses unburied.
But let’s play the swingometer game. A narrow overall majority of one for the Tories – if the Lib Dem vote stays the same – would mean Tory gains of 116 seats. But the net effect on the Lib Dems, if the same swing were repeated uniformly in every seat, would be a loss of five seats. We would win 57 instead of 62 seats last time.
This is not, though, the end of the story. We would have arrived at this position by winning 8 seats from Labour, and losing 13 seats to the Tories. But would we? This fails to take into account our track record in defending our turf once we win it.
The Nuffield general election study said: “The party for whom the personal popularity of their incumbent appeared to matter most, however, was, as in previous elections, the Liberal Democrat party”. The Lib Dem incumbency factor was worth an average of 6.6 per cent of the vote in 2005.
Out of the 13 Lib Dem seats which the Tories would in theory win if they got an overall majority – including my own Eastleigh – five are being defended for the first time by new MPs who can expect the “incumbency bounce” to lift them out of danger. We would also win another seat nominally lost to the Tories due to boundary changes.
Because we have younger MPs, there is only one new seat which is more vulnerable because of a retiring incumbent. Even if we lost there, overall Tory gains from us would be cut from 13 to 8. Add back the gains from Labour and we would have the same number of MPs.
There is everything still to play for at the next general election. Where we work we win, and everyone knows that Lib Dems work. Our opponents underestimate us at their peril.
* Chris Huhne is the Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh and shadow Home Secretary.
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26 Comments
Spot on Chris!
Incumbency can be key.
I can remember times in the 1980s when we were fifth in the polls (behind the SDP and Greens) on –6% or something, and still comfortably holding my Council seat.
And in the 90s when the Blair bounce was going to see us off, and we kept increasing our majorities!
Happy days!
I also wish to state that the home affairs policies unveiled by Huhne are strong, & hopefully the more reasonable sections of the electorate will agree. 🙂
I don’t think it is optimistic at all. It is an accurate assessment of what is likely to happen all things being equal. The challenge for Clegg (and Huhne) is to improve on that.
I can only laugh when some twonk, his mind addled by the wizardly of Martin Baxter, assures me that we are headed for our doom. Nonetheless, let’s not kid ourselves that the next general election won’t be our most challenging campaign in decades, or that even a net increase in a handful of MPs is meaningful progress.
No mention of the possibilty of Lib Dems losing seats to Labour,anyone really believe that Sarah Teather will defeat Dawn Butler in Brent?
The so called ‘incumbecy factor’ is totally misleading,it’s simply the fact that at Westminster elections the Lib Dems never have to defend their record in office.In all other elections where they have a record to defend they lose like all the other parties,nothing to do with hard work,incumbency,just what they have or haven’t achieved.
The past 3 elections where the Lib Dems have made gains have been when the Tories have been unpopular,diifficult to see an angry electorate desperate to get rid of Labour,allowing some bed-blockers to get in the way.30-40 Lib Dem MP’s in 2010 will be agood result.
“Out of the 13 Lib Dem seats which the Tories would in theory win if they got an overall majority – including my own Eastleigh – five are being defended for the first time by new MPs who can expect the “incumbency bounce” to lift them out of danger.”
I think he’s spot on with this but I really hope this sentence doesn’t come back to haunt him big time!
An ultra-pessimist (and I tend towards that as regards elections) would wonder if the “incumbency bounce” was a factor of post 1997 anti-tory feeling at elections. There wasn’t much incumbency bounce for Richard Wainwright in 1970, Paul Tyler in 1974 #2, Ronnie Fearn in 1992 or Liz Lynne in 1997 – though they are millenia ago in terms of our campaigning techniques and incumbency protection strategies.
At the end of the day, what will determine whether then Lib-Dems grow in numbers will be policies and so far, in my humble opinion, they are lacking.
To me, the acid test which seems never used relates to the individual for example:
How will this policy affect a single unmarried mum in Bournemouth?
How will this affect a new start up business in Cornwall?
Esoteric considerations such as incumbency factors are all right for party conferences but what will make the difference is how individuals perceive it will affect them – or not, as is usually the case.
For me it’s as simple as this: in 1997 we were supposed to get wiped out as voters flocked like sheep to that nice Mr Blair to get rid of the horrible Tories.
Didn’t happen.
So why should it *automatically* happen when the positions are reversed? Doesn’t mean we can’t cock it up, but there’s no inherent reason why Chris’ broader message here should be wrong.
There seems to have been a little out-burst of multiple personalities in this thread.
It’s fine if you wish to use an alias, but using more than one alias in the same thread can give a rather false impression…
(As ever, if a mistake has been made and your comment moderated in error, just get in touch.)
This is good analysis from one of our brightest brains and I’m happy to take his analysis over the bleatings of the Tory and Labour visitors anyday
If Chris says it will be, it will be. Now how about those six numbers for Saturday, Chris?
“broncodelsey Says:
5th September 2008 at 11:19 am
No mention of the possibilty of Lib Dems losing seats to Labour,anyone really believe that Sarah Teather will defeat Dawn Butler in Brent?”
I seem to remember being one of a very small number of people who beleived she would win the Brent East by-election.
As James and others have said I think Chris has got this about right.
Whatever the overall national swing we know from experience that we are capable of reducing the swing against us in seats we are defending and at the same time winning much larger swings against Labour in seats where we are on the attack.
If the national poll position puts us on a small loss of seats then my money would go on us making modest overall gains.
The question is what can we do to do better than that.
Re: Brent East. Unlike Neil, I didn’t think we were going to hold it in 2005 (although I did spend a couple of days helping out there anyway). I won’t make the mistake of underestimating Sarah Teather again.
Chris is talking sense about the favourable battleground we are fighting on. Simon is talking sense about the fact that we still need to fight a better fight!
‘There is still all to play for…’, I agree 100%.
Some things are in our control – policies, work on the ground etc – all which I think are being done fairly well.
Things outside our control,can alter the political landscape very quickly,I’m sure there will be one or two more ‘events’, before the GE!!
I believe Nick Clegg’s comment about targetting 50 Nulab seats was exactly what was required. We stand a good chance of gaining a tranche of these, whilst there is an equally good chance of our holding the vast majority of our present 63 ( including Chris’s). Chris’s comments are in my view spot-on and should be made widely known. However, we do need to have an effective and well rehearsed riposte to the inevitable Nulab jibe that a vote for us will ” let in the Tories”. This was the recent response in the local press of the Nulab candidate in Sheffield Central to the idea that we were to target the seat. Nick MUST be very careful in what he says about a minority Conservative administration.
The incumbency bounce is real. In recent local government elections, Lib Dems have done significantly better in areas where we have MPs. Our vote has remained steady or has increased in those places, though it has dropped nationwide.
We have also tended to do better in seats we are targeting for the next GE, be they Labour or Conservative. Look at St Albans, where we took control of the council in May. Our vote went down in those parts of the Borough not in the constituency, but it went up in those parts that are.
Trolls salivating at the prospect of a Lib Dem wipe-out will be sorely disappointed.
I admire Chris’s ability to put a positive analysis and there are certainly some good points here. But…
I can’t find any evidence to suggest out poll ratings have increased from 13% to 17% since the leadership election. Our average poll rating in November last year was 16%. Our average at present is 17%.
Positing that we will get 22% of the vote at the next election is not wholly unreasonable, but it certainly leans towards optimism. There is some evidence that we go up in the course of an election – especially when we have a new leader. But it’s by no means a certainty.
Finally, sketching out a scenario based on a uniform swing that would deliver a Tory majority of one enormously understates the Conservatives’ present polling position. Again, maybe they will fall back, but the polls presently show a swing to the Conservatives way in excess of what they need to squeak in with a single figures majority. This, in turn, means that Chris is looking at a LibDem to Conservative swing that is enormously smaller than the present polls indicate. (Essentially Chris is positing a swing of about 3% from LD to Con, the current polls show a swing of about 8%). I am not saying the swing might end up being 3% – but the present “spot price” of 8% places many more LD seats at risk from the Tories.
Finally, on the prospect of taking seats off Labour, there are clearly a good handful where we have a great chance, but the bald truth is that a good number of Labour targets either need monumental swings and/or are in Scotland (where our poll numbers show our vote halving since the General Election, actually implying a swing FROM LD to Labour, not the otehr way round).
All this indicates to me that while the electoral picture is complex and multi-dimensional, the truth is that the bulk of our key electoral battles are in LD-Tory marginals, mainly in England, and mainly south of Birmingham.
http://johnhemming.blogspot.com/2008/09/results-thursday-4th-september-2008.html
Further Result from Thursday 28-8-08
Crewkerne TC,
LD Robin Pailthorpe 1317 (59.7)
Con 814 (36.9)
Lab 75 (3.4)
Majority 503
Turnout 38.6%
LD hold
And the Tories think they are going to unseat David Laws?
Brian – the simple response to Labour saying that a vote for us will “let in the Tories” is to say that the alternative, given the voters are deserting Labour in droves, is a Tory.
Unfortunately for us, the polls indicate that currently the net effect is a swing directly from Labour to the Tories bypassing us completely, so there is a lot of work to do.
Brian Nusgrave – of course apart from the 50 Labour seats there are a handful of three-wayers, harder to predict, but where a backdrop of Labour being hammered and a credible Lib Dem campaign will result in further potential gains. Places like Ealing/Acton, St Albans and Reading East.
Good article Chris, and good to see a politician dealing in real psephology, rather than grandiose certainties.
I’ve written a short piece on PoliticalBetting.com so that our punters can have a go at challenging your argument.
All the best,
Morus
This is a great article because I think Chris is being a bit over-realistic of our prospects.
But that is his job. My job as an activist is to be relentlessly positive and point out how to apply the lessons of our previous successes in order to gain more successes.
In my area (and we are moving forward, not a target) we have more activists than ever before, we deliver more leaflets than ever before and we have more councillors than ever before.
We think we can overturn conventional wisdom by working our socks off and making sure the result is down to our efforts in talking to voters, not the efforts of a select group of backroom journalists talking to their editors.
Simon says Nick Clegg has been invisible – he should tell that to all the people Nick has been meeting in his town halls up and down the country!
Simon says the recent spate of by-elections are good indicators of the public opinion in the country at large – he should tell that to all the people in the other parts of the country who haven’t had their say!
Simon says 2005 was a high-water mark – I say 2005 was only just the beginning of the redefinition of our party as the party of moral, intellectual and political leadership!
Sesenco, I’m not totally sure the figures back up what you say about the local elections in LibDem-held constituencies. It is generally true that the swing from LD to Con in local elections (across the board) has been small compared to the swing in the national opinion polls. This may be a reflection that we are winning the ground war against Cameron or might just reflect the fact that our local council vote is more robust than our national vote. If you look back to the dim distant days of 1988 or 1989, the party was getting around 20% of the vote in local elections even when the scoring a truly dismal rating of 3 or 4% in national opinion polls.
In some LD seats, there has been a very measurable swing to the Tories at local level(in some of the SW London seats, for example, or in Torbay). In others, the position in this Parliment is very similar to the last Parliament. In a few there have been LD advances (e.g. Solihull).
The $60,000 question is whether the results at the next election are more likely to reflect the local council results of the last couple of years (in which case Tory inroads into LD seats will not be enormous) or whether the present national polls and a uniform swing are about right – in which case, there are a whole swathe of seats at risk.
I imagine the truth lies somewhere between the two. A strong local effort can be expected to mitigate a negative national swing, but won’t usually nullify it.
“Our poll ratings have recovered since the beginning of the leadership contest, when they averaged 13 per cent. We have recently averaged 17 per cent, better than at the same time of the electoral cycle in two of the last three parliaments.”
Hmmm.
The average figures for national opinion polls from the months of September, 3 years into the last 3 parliaments (from ukpollingreport.co.uk) are:
September 1995:
CON 28 LAB 52 LD 16
September 2000:
CON 36 LAB 39 LD 18
September 2004:
CON 32 LAB 33 LD 25
But I grant that our poll rating was similar to the current one in 1995 and 2000, even though it was 8 points higher under Charles Kennedy at the same point in the last electoral cycle.
But of course the huge difference is in the Tory lead over the Liberal Democrats. In those three years it was 12, 18 and 7 points.
Now it is 29 points. It’s ridiculous to pretend that isn’t going to make a big difference, whatever local factors – such as the advantages of incumbency – may apply.
I don’t actually understand why there seems to be such a determination to minimise the Tory threat to our parliamentary seats. Positive thinking is one thing, but surely this is more an issue of false security and over-confidence – especially if the question is whether to concentrate resources on defence against the Tory threat, or to dissipate them in a quest for largely unattainable gains from Labour.
I have a lot of respect for Chris Huhne, but I think he is being clever with numbers.
You only have to watch a TV program during the local election results and you realise that politicians in all political parties can do this. Usually the independent commentators are the most reliable in putting things into their proper perspective.
I think we have to look more to the fundamentals. Is there anything about the Liberal Democrats that has struck a cord with the electorate? Whatever it is we stand for, we have the added hurdle that people have to believe it strongly enough to vote for us starting in third place.
I think this is what we should be discussing here.
The problem with psephology is that it is invariably being used by people who don’t really understand it (journalists) and people who don’t want to (sitting MP’s).
As I have pointed out on many occassions, when we look at the current opinion polls, the devil is in the detail. Yes, there has been a large swing from Labour to the Cons and yes it has passed us by, but the swing is nothing like as large as the headline poll figures imply.
What has changed is that the PTV scores (Propensity to Vote) for Con supporters has shot up to levels which are highly unlikely and the level of the other parties to very low levels. Two polls I have seen show the PTV score of LD supporters as low as 50%. This is equally unlikely, especially in seats we are targeting or where we have sitting MP’s.
For these reasons, Chris’s more upbeat view is closer to reality than the mindless nonsense being punted by the Tory Trolls on PB. I expect us to be at around 55 seats on current figures, losing around 15 seats to the Tories, though gaining perhaps 3 or 4.
Where I am far less optimistic is in the number of corresponding gains from Labour. At the moment I don’t think this will be more than a handful. I think Nick has spotted this and is adjusting strategically. Whether His Lordship and his acolytes are able to adjust their tactics accordingly is another matter.