It is hardly a surprise to read a piece from John Rentoul in The Independent painting a bleak picture for the Liberal Democrats, but there are two particular puzzles about today’s article:
no one has cast real votes in real ballot boxes since the Sedgefield and Ealing Southall by-elections
Err, local council by-elections anyone? If in your view by-elections don’t count as ‘real votes in real ballot boxes’, the logic applies just as much to local as Westminster by-elections. If they do count, well then once again the logic applies just as much to local as Westminster by-elections. It’s really rather difficult to see how you can count one whilst discounting the other as being ‘real votes in real ballot boxes’.
Looking at council by-election would, mind you, paint a rather different picture, what with there having been many good Liberal Democrat results in council by-elections during the period in which Rentoul is saying has been all doom and gloom for the party. And that brings us to:
What is most surprising is that the election of Clegg just before Christmas had no effect on Lib- Dem standing.
In brief: not so.
At greater length: let’s have a look at what the opinion polls tell us about the situation in December compared with now and looking at the fieldwork (rather than publication) dates of polls.
ComRes: 16% in December, 17% in latest poll (March); change +1
ICM: 18%, 20% (April); +2
MORI: 14%, 19% (April); +5
Populus: 16%, 19% (April);+3
YouGov: 15% (average of three polls), 17% (April); +2
Overall: 15.8%, 18.4%; +2.6
The months running up to the 2005 general election are as good a benchmark as any to compare these ratings with. In all the polls in January, February and March 2005 the party averaged just over 20% in the polls. In other words, in the few months since Nick Clegg was elected leader the party has closed approaching two-thirds of this gap. Not bad going really.
(By the way, although a change of, say +1, in one individual poll should be treated with caution given the margins of error, the consistency of the picture across a large number of polls means you can safely draw conclusions, and the overall picture of steady growth in party support is reflected across the whole period: this isn’t just an artifact of the polls used in the table above.)
Of course, you might take a different view about whether 2005 is an appropriate benchmark on whether approaching two-thirds is enough so far, but it is hard to see how you can say there has been “no effect”.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Debt-ridden graduates claim they are seen as cash cows
Why non-fiction books need their indexes
Changes in status: Local Elections wrap up
Ben Wood
Ed Sanderson
Jack
Matt (Bristol)
John Grout
6 Comments
Good analysis. Maybe we’re all guilty of being a tad negative at the moment.
Yes, particularly since there probably won’t been a General Election for at least a year to 18 months, I can’t say any of the polls have much relevance atm, apart from raising or lowering morale among party’s supporters.
I don’t dispute your basic argument and the way you have presented the poll figures is a fair one. My only quibble is that the april poll figures are by and large taken after several weeks of RoPA equal air time. What will be interesting is to take the late March/Late april polls. My observation so far is we are getting NC, plus 1% and Plus 2% results which is a little soggy given the boost that air time usually generates. In terms of Nick Clegg, well i think we are cursed by FDR and the hundred days time frame. YOu really can’t judge a leaders impact till at least 6 months and both Ashdown and Kennedy were slow burners at first.
John Rentoul covering his own back – a man who thinks Blairism has a future – why should that surprise anyone?
His distain for fact is self-delusion preparing for his undoing.
Rentoul is a Nu Labour apologist. His article is all part of a concerted attack on the Liberal Democrats this week, viz interalia, Gordon Brown and Jack Straw’s media interviews in the last day or so.
When did opinion polls on party voting intention over a year out from a General Election ever have much to do with actual results.
Indeed it’s been a long time since Local Election results had anything much in common with any kind of national elections picture.
I expect Labour and Conservative to make some net gains and the Liberal Democrats a number of net losses, all 3 parties will claim the results as a success.
Of course all 3 main parties have abandoned Local Elections as being elections to choose Local representatives.
The War in Iraq, Council Tax, VAT, 10p starting rate, Railtrack Nationalisation, anti-terrorist legislation, Minimum Wage – all things that the 3 main parties have campaigned on frequently talking of Local Elections as referendums on this party or that party – no wonder turnout in Local Elections is at record lows and no wonder people are cynical about the purpose of Local Government and decentralisation of public services when all 3 main parties continually campaign at Local Government level on national issues that are outside the remit of Local Government and pledge more and more standardisation on provision of services and more and more national targets, they all do it – David Cameron talks of localisation and then comes out with new pledes to end postcode lottery and new pledges on targets for one disease or another – if you allow variation in policy locally then you get variation in outcomes, in some areas it is excellent, in others it is not so good, improvement comes with the ability to see how different policies work locally and for local hospital and school managers to be able to pick not just policies for their local area, but policies that have worked excellently in many other areas.
Doesn’t work for everything – railways very much work best on national co-ordinated strategies, trains travel across areas, hospitals and schools though are locally integral units.