The likely explanation emerging for the Liberal Democrat vote share in the general election coming in much lower than even the immediately previous polls suggested is that there was a late swing away from the party, partly due to Lib Dem supporters being less willing to turn out (see, for example, this from ComRes). It’s natural to slide from that into a general story about the party peaking after the first TV debate and then being in decline during the rest of the campaign.
However, there is a risk of missing the wider context – and is show by these figures from a post-election Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll. Looking at when people say they made up their mind how to vote, we find support for the Liberal Democrats as follows:
Before election called: 18%
Shortly after election called: 29%
After first debate: 60%
After last debate: 26%
Last couple of days: 26%
On election day: 28%
The Tories peaked in the first two categories and Labour peaked in the “after last debate” category (suggesting that although Brown overall rated poorly in that debate he did manage to rally the core vote).
It’s the 18% figure for those who decided how to vote before the election was called that turned out to be the problem for the party. There was a debate surge and decline, but getting 28% amongst those who decided on polling day would have still put the party in close contention for second place – were it not for the deadweight from the people who had decided before the election started.
The poll also sheds some light on the class patterns to vote. Liberal Democrat support was up 4 points amongst ABs, up 2 points amongst C1s but down 5 amongst C2s and up 1 point amongst DEs. Labour support was also down amongst the C2s, but support for Conservatives and others was sharply up. (These figures are comparing two different polls, so remember the margins of error.)
This growth in C2 Conservative support may help explain the failure to squeeze the Conservative vote in some key seats if those campaigns relied too much on trying to squeeze the Conservative vote by targeting up-market parts of the constituency.
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9 Comments
Yes, there is anger in the Tory and Lib Dem ranks, but I believe that the programme of government will appeal to the majority of voters and might well see off Labour, making the Lib Dems the official opposition.
This is to be welcomed.
As a libertarian, I’m heartened by the strengthening of libertarianism. This coalition has a lot going for it, but we should judge on the results, not the rhetoric.
It’s an interesting finding, with 54% of Tory & Labour voters making their mind up before the election was even called but only 37% of eventual LibDem voters (though 15% of the latter decided on the first debate against 3% of all others, so had there been no mid-April “Cleggmania” something around 42% of a reduced final LibDem total would have decided by Apr 6). Do we have similar data from past elections? I wonder if the reasons for the low starting-point may go back a good deal more than five years. One possible explanation that comes to mind is that early deciders are more likely to be those with a long history of backing their chosen party: the split between the three parties prior to the announcement is fairly close (allowing for this being a bad Labour year) to their average over recent decades, and also to the ratio of each party’s lowest share, presumably reflecting their core vote. In fact the LibDem rating comes in slightly below that, so I’d consider also the behaviour of older voters with stronger recollections of a two-party system. There may be some support for this in the voting pattern by age, with older electors voting more like early deciders and younger ones like late pickers – surely a promising sign for LibDems. And there’s the possible role of traditional family allegiance: voting LibDem is less likely to be “in the blood” owing to the long mid 20th-century Liberal eclipse. So we could be looking at an echo among the “already decideds” from habits more than a generation ago – significant if they’re half of all voters but likely to be less so in future as two-party voting fades into history.
I think that there was an issue with visibility, and yes it is mostly caused by two-party thinking. The tv debates solved that, and the biggest impact was from the first debate, because that is when Nick Clegg suddenly became visible, then for the rest of the campaign, he had already been seen. Now that Nick Clegg is Deputy Prime Minister, and other great Lib Dems are in the Government, visibility will not be limited to locations where the Lib Dems are one of the party’s in a two party race. From this position, it is important to sustain and build on awareness of our distinct nature as a party, and build up positive votes for what Lib Dems offer.
Incidentally I hail from a family that have been backing the Liberals, then Lib Dems, since before, and then right through the eclipse, although I accept we are a rare bunch.
Perhaps it also requires an acceptance that the surge was unexpected and not planned for and that the response to it was woefully inadequate.
It seems self-evident that two policies in particular – on joining the Euro and on what to do with illegal immigrants
were particular vote losers. Given the rapid speed with which they were droped and the fact that both should not have been in the manifesto in the first place, I predict no-one will be held accounatble for their inclusion or the votes lost.
This is a fascinating survey with some fairly surprising findings.
Most interesting is the voters’ attitude to “big government”. Many writers on this site have convinced themselves hat the election represents a huge shift in favour of “libertarianism” and away from centralism. Yet according to this poll, most voters – even most Lib Dem/Tory voters – are in favour of a bigger government getting involved in more things. Curious.
Whenever anyone stands explicitly as a libertarian, they get very few votes. Conversely when Vince Cable advocated substantial state involvement to sort out our financial system, he became much more popular as a politician. The “small state” solutions offered by the Tories made no impact outside of their core vote.
@Geoffrey – Lib Dem state model is very much “small state” (and more powers and involvement on a local level) too. We just have a more pragmatic approach and more council level experience* than the Tories do, which is the only way this “Big Society” thing can work.
* Our party structure itself is evidence of that, although bizarrely, the Tories are envious of this structure and it is rather odd to have Cameron endorse a bottom-up society when his own party is anything but.
I find it rather reassuring that voters prefer politicians who advocate using the mechanisms of government to those who say they shouldn’t be intervening in the real world: “Vote for me and I’ll do as little as possible” never struck me as an appealing offer to electors. Thatcher got away with it but with her own brand of tub-thumping authoritarianism thrown into the mix. It’s remarkable that even amid a financial & economic crisis widely blamed on Labour, the Tories only rallied 24% of the electorate, less than Labour in 1979.
I suspect most voters saw Cameron’s “big society” for what it was – at best empty rhetoric, at worst shifting more of the burden of social provision onto local communities and voluntary groups. We’ve seen the results of this mantra of decentralisation in health postcode lotteries, a fragmented two-tier education system that’s abandoned most children, and scandal-hit local authorities inadequate to ensure the life-saving child protection services that national government won’t deliver.
LibDems shouldn’t confuse their own fondness for local involvement with Conservative ambitions to divest government of a large chunk of its social obligations regardless of communities’ vastly differing capacity to bear the burden. It’s been widely said that at polling day approached, voters just didn’t “trust” the Tories, and with good reason. Heed their unease: share power by all means, but examine the small print before subscribing to the slogans.
@Dave – “LibDems shouldn’t confuse their own fondness for local involvement with Conservative ambitions to divest government of a large chunk of its social obligations regardless of communities’ vastly differing capacity to bear the burden.”
That is why our influence in this government is so important, the overall model/structure is the same but we have a more social democratic approach to it. And it looks to me like the coalition agreement does take this into account – without Lib Dem influence I think it would have been disastrous and was badly thought through/planned.
(OTOH I do think some of our own policies may well benefit from being dropped now and worked on for 2015, because they are a good idea but need fleshing out, like the “amnesty” for immigrants – in the manifesto it says it is valid for everyone who entered before the end of 2010, but nobody seemed to really know if it was a one off etc – which will only be ‘sellable’ once border controls are strengthened)