The Lib Dems have raised more than £500,000 in individual donations since Theresa May called for a General Election on Tuesday morning.
All parties have made cash appeals to supporters after Theresa May’s surprise decision to hold an election on 8 June.
The Lib Dems say they raised £500,000 in 48 hours.
A similar Labour fund-raising drive is reported to have raised £200,000. Labour has yet to comment on the figure, reported by the FT.
The Conservatives have been contacted for details of their fundraising efforts.
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron claimed activists and donors were “flocking” to his party on the back of its distinctive anti-Brexit message.
The party, who are arguing for another referendum on the final Brexit deal, say they have seen their membership jump to 95,000, attracting 8,000 new members since Tuesday alone.
The Lib Dems also raised £1.972m in donations in the final quarter of 2016 – more than Labour over the period.
This is a very good start but if we are to do as well as we can, we need much more. You can donate here.
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13 Comments
Its not just the donations & the members, something seems to be happening with our Polling as well. We have been rising in the Polls since last Autumn but with glacial slowness, till a couple of weeks ago it worked out at a 1% rise every 3 Months. We seem to have risen another 1% in the last 10 days – thats an impressive acceleration.
We arent the only Party going places either, Labours Polling seems to have fallen by 1% over the last 10 days.
All good nes but it creates a huge headache for the teams working out where we should target our scarce resources, the goalposts keep shifting.
A good headache to have! Let’s hope by tomorrow there are more % waiting for us.
After observing the comment sections in Guardian, FT and Independent, I have to say that Libdem would win far more support if Farron RULES OUT A COALITION WITH TORIES (NOW BREXIT TORIES). Many neutral voters hesitated when they heard that Farron did not rule out this option.
And in the South West, where many Libdem target constituencies voted leave, Libdem should use the language of a Soft Brexit rather than a outright Remain.
Every substantial party’s vote consists of at least two components: the base, which is the group of people who will vote for their party’s candidate no matter what; and a penumbra of floating voters who may vote for one party in one election and another in the next.
Labour’s poll figures of ~25% show that it is very close to subsisting only on its base vote. The current Labour voter is someone who will never think of voting for any other party.
The Tories’ much higher figures (~45%) show a large percentage of floating voters, including those who previously have voted Labour, UKIP — or Lib Dem.
Attacking Labour therefore does very little. It doesn’t win over Labour’s base vote, and it’s more or less irrelevant to ex-Labour voters who are now looking elsewhere — frequently, at the Tories.
Posing as the sensible alternative to the Conservatives, however, stands a chance of picking off the Tory-leaning floating voter, who may not agree with many Tory positions but who votes Conservative because he or she feels that there is no real alternative.
@David-1 as perceptive and informative as ever.
I remember this being exactly the case in the 1983 election. It became obvious in the first two weeks of the election that Labour were on the floor, yet still Roy Jenkins and the SDP used their fire power on Labour.
Suddenly the Tories look vulnerable on tax. I never bought the idea that the election was dreamed up on a walking tour in Wales. This was a carefully planned campaign. A close friend reminded me the timing of this election is the earliest possible election that yet ensures that the 1997 entrants if they lose get their maximum parliamentary pension.
There is no doubt debate about an early election or not and May was against … until … until that defeat on NI changes for the self employed. It must have become obvious to the Chancellor that he couldn’t get the books to work through this parliament with Osborne’s pledge on tax limiting his options.
So … well it should be the Secret Tax Plans line, now.
It is going to be very, very difficult to gain seats. Alistair Meeks in Political Betting today confirms this in some detail. At the moment there is too much optimism and little enough realism. I would be happy to get 15 seats, think that may well be our ceiling.
It is also most important to state absulutely that we will not enter any coalition. Do not mince the words, be clear NO, NO, NO. Let others talk that language if they must but we must be CLEAR. Minority governments can operate quite well, SNP in Scotland for example in the previous Assembly.
theakes, I agree it is going to be far more difficult that might at first be assumed.
The UKIP vote is going to dissolve and migrate virtually in full to the Tories even if they originally came from Labour or ourselves.
We are however going to pick up a few ‘university rich’ constituencies.
The upshot of this is that the next Parliamentary Party is going to be made up of a very different representation to that of the 1997 – 2015 Parly Party. The consequence of this is that many of those seats we held 97-15 are going to go a further 5 years without the kind of organisational structure possible when there is an MP.
The pre-occupations of the 2017 – 22 Party – its style and character will be quite different.
If Corbyn is replaced with another Momentum backed leader, the movement towards a new ‘centrist’ party will intensify – a development which may receive a strong welcome from such a new 2017 – 22 Parliamentary Party and 50% plus of the Lords.
@Bill le Breton “We are however going to pick up a few ‘university rich’ constituencies.”
I wonder if the timing of the election might impact upon that, with many students sitting important exams or moving away after those exams.
For all Labour’s membership growth – building a political movement they say – they don’t seem (unlike new Lib Dem members) to be much willing to donate to the party.
The curious case of the membership in the night as Sherlock Holmes might have put it
It is entirely up to LibDem members whether to enter coalition & with which party. Not the Party Leader. Try reading our Constitution. A supermajority is required.
ColinW – If I remember correctly the constitution hasn’t changed substantively with regard to coalition since 2010, when Cameron was announced as PM and went to Buckingham Palace days before the party held its special conference. The members were there to rubber stamp it, and other than a few very courageous souls like David Rendel, who knew what was coming, they dutifully did so.
@Peter, it is potentially a problem that students who were old enough to vote at the EU referendum are registered at their home address, and not at their term-time address, so we should join with groups to ensure that those students either get a postal vote, or ensure that they are on the local register.
Any actions to increase the participation amongst younger people is likely to be to our benefit, and that of our pro-remain allies. Targeting campaigning for registration in remain and university towns is a good investment of our time.
Peter I was thinking more about the human fabric of universities – wherever they are more densely congregated – rather than foreseeing an army of students in May and June – congregations of the ‘Anywhere’s’ to borrow from David Goodhart. By rich I did not so much mean wealthy as ‘fertile.
As in 2015 (as in 99% of elections in fact), targeting is the essence – we vastly over targeted in 2015 and really took too many of those target campaigns too much at trust. Using a tired formula and Dragon’s Dens filled with the great and the good to which teams were summoned instead of with those experienced in campaigning thoroughly examining the strength of the ground.
This time there is a temptation not only to over target but to target in the wrong places. Try adding 4/5ths of the UKIP 2015 vote to the Tory numbers in seats –
especially in seats where the core Liberal and Lib Dem vote was built on very old Labour. eg the mining communities of Somerset. Les Farris taught me about that.
We shall lose 5 seats by < 250 votes. Where are they? They could easily be a difference of 33% in the numbers of MPs we get.