So, students don’t hate us. There’s a surprise.
An article in the Financial Times highlights a poll which shows that support for the Liberal Democrats among students is still healthy, despite tuition fees.
13.4% of students back the party, compared to an average of 8.8%. Those levels need to be higher, but it’s an encouraging start.
The finding about Lib Dem support among students is likely to surprise critics who have long asserted that Mr Clegg’s party is disliked across Britain’s campuses.
“The core strategy with LDs have always been younger women and students, that support has fallen in line with the wider party but students are still their strength – they haven’t been wiped out there,” said Andrew Cooper, founder and strategic director of Populus.
The statistic could suggest that Lib Dem stances in favour of green energy, the EU and helping the poor have been popular among students.Another possible explanation is that today’s students were several years off university when the government announced the big fees increase and have had time to accustom themselves to a more expensive higher education.
Mr Clegg, the deputy prime minister, insists that more young people are going to university full-time than ever and that students’ ability to borrow their fees from a government agency on favourable terms have helped them cope with the increase.
Even the chair of the National Union of Students said that students and young people were not going to base their vote on one issue.
This should give the party confidence to reinvigorate its campaigning among young people.
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32 Comments
As one of the comments states, the student level of support was over 30% in April 2010, so it’s dropped by more than a half and is in keeping with the drop in Lib Dem voting intention polling.
Given 48% of students voted Lib Dem in 2010 I wouldn’t have thought 13.4% was all that great.
Keep in mind that in the last election, support for the Lib Dems was 40.5 per cent, while 33.5 per cent backed Labour, 20 per cent the Conservatives and 10 per cent ‘other’. In December 2010, student support for the Lib Dems fell to 15 per cent [YouGov figures quoted in link above], with the Conservatives receiving 26 per cent, Labour receiving 42 per cent and ‘other’ accounting for 17 per cent.
Okay, 13.4% is still far better than 8%. But looking at polls from the last few years suggests that student support for LDs fell and never picked itself up.
As noted above this places the Lib Dems on about 32% of the support they received at the 2010 GE. The same percentage change applied to the 23% of the total LD vote in 2010 yields about 7.5% which is eerily similar to the average of the polls at the moment. So the best that can be said (and it actually is a little surprising) is that the collapse in LD support is no worse amongst students than in the population generally.
If 13.8% of students will support the lib dems and (hypothetically) 48% of students hate the lib dems, is it true to say that the Lib Dems aren’t hated by students? In other words, the data you are using does not support the assertion you are making.
Well actually they don’t ! – as pointed out by AndrewR – (and can be confirmed here
http://www.youthsight.com/media-centre/announcements/liberal-democrats-dumped-by-the-student-electorate-after-a-whirlwind-romance/ )
48% of students voted Lib Dem in 2010, collapsing to 15% in November 2010 at the time of the tuition fee protests. The 13.8% represents a further fall in support from November 2010. The headline and the reportage is a masterpiece in propaganda misinformation.
The Students have not forgotten, nor forgiven and neither have their parents or families.
For a reminder of the confrontation between the Students and Clegg see the apended you tube film. Keep telling us black is white if you must.
There will be no forgiveness until fees are scrapped and debts wiped. AND CLEGG GOES.
http://www.libdemfightback.yolasite.com
It was up around 50%. Who writes this stuff? We lost approx 3/4 of our core student vote and saved no money and this is somehow an achievement cos it shows we can make tough decisions in Government. ..
I’m not persuaded that the harm done by several policies which have hurt students and young people by this Government will be easy to mend. I don’t believe tuition fees are a tenable policy for a progressive party.
I believe students at university now are very different to those at uni even in 2010. People know they were hurt pretty badly and that it was this Government that failed to listen (nor learn) when students protested.
I’m not surprised the author of this piece chose to remain anonymous.
According to YouGov, 45% of students supported the Lib Dems as of May 2010. By November 2010 (after the pledge betrayal) that had slumped to 15%. Now it appears to have dropped even further, with this poll saying 13.4%, and a poll by YouthSight in April saying just 6%.
So this must be the most inaccurate headline in LDV history.
Was this article the result of a bet to see who could write the most ridiculous piece of spin possible? To whoever wrote it, congratulations, it’s worthy of the old Iraqi Information Ministry.
rofl =I have just spent half an hour number crunching local election results in Bristol West, a seat we won with a 26,593 votes in 2010 (48% of the vote) and a healthy 11,360 majority.
In 2009 and 2010 the Lib Dems got 16,291 votes in the 9 local government wards that make up the parliamentary seat, 45% of the vote cast, in the same wards in 2009 and 2010 the Lib Dems got 6491 votes, 25% of the votes cast.
we are told where we have an MP we are doing better, but we’ve still managed to lose 20 percentage points support in one of our safest seats and in terms of votes cats in local elections are not only behind Labour but behind the Greens.
Bristol West has a lot of students.
Put it another way 86.6% do not support the Liberal Dems, up from 55% at the last election, frankly given that young people are more radical and less likely to vote Conservative, this 31% drop is frightening. Once again a misleading story.
Look at the Cambridge local election and EE results. We need a new leader
Last time I saw a student voting intention poll that wasn’t paywalled and so I could actually look at the figures (in the run up to the European elections, YouGov I believe) it had the LDs on 6%, fifth, behind Labour, the Tories, the Greens and UKIP.
13 percent is awful – I still cringe when I remember the tuition fee leaflets I was delivering before the last general that warned of rises up to 7k ! We are getting what we deserved frankly.
Going forward we have no decent messages for students – the idiots at the top prattle on about the environment when I asked what messages we could use on the doorstep with students . We tried this – didn’t resonate the modern student seems less environmentally aware/interested than my generation. I’m proud of our role in gay marriage but the students think it’s David Cameron.
We need some distinctive policies for students – maybe drug law reform. But we need them fast – we’ve got tons of student seats and we’ve got to get some votes back that have leached to labour
Do we expect student support for Lib Dems to go up or down as the number of students in universities paying the new tuition fees increases?
However, my understanding is that recent changes to voter registration means that halls of residence can no longer register students en masse so it’s likely that in 2015 a lot of new students might find themselves unable to express their approval or disapproval through the ballot box anyway.
We can go on wallowing in how awful the situation is from now until eternity (or at least until May 2015). I think we should be spending the time more constructively. The first thing I would do is identify to whom the Party could appeal again. I think (given Labour’s abject failure in this regard (as some of their own MPs like John Mann pointed out after their lack-lustre local election results) plus the Tories going through one of their periodic existential phases over Europe) that we should primarily be positioning ourselves as the ANTI-Kipper party, i.e. going for voters (and constituencies with large voting populations) who are young, educated, open-minded, internationalist, pro-EU, multi-cultural, urban, entrepreneurial, creative, innovative and skilled and who are opposed to the über-Thatcherite agenda hidden under Farage’s gurning and grinning). We then need to drive home a thorough policy review reaffirming where the Party really stands in detail on building a “Fairer society and a stronger economy” and developing a strategy to reestablish our credibility around these policies (for which there will be wide support among all those (like the authors of the recent Cruddas report for Labour) who believe neither in Big Government any more nor untrammelled free markets to solve basic social problems nor promote economic prosperity for the vast majority, not just the 1%). The final step will be making it clear that a new face will be taking over to lead a revived, revitalised and radicalised party at the first practicable opportunity. If we do not do this, we might as well just leave and head in one of three directions (Green, Blue or Red) (none of which appears that attractive to me personally).
@Charles Rothwell – I agree with some of what you say. The party certainly needs to reconnect with the radical, progressive agenda that has been abandoned in the headlong rush to soggy centre-rightism. But I really do not see how that works with Mr Clegg in charge. I don’t say that with any expectation of him now being replaced, although he absolutely should be, but from consideration of the prospect of how the other parties will mock the Lib Dems for their ex-leader-in-waiting.
Can we take it that the “grudging respect” hypothesis – which argued that voters would return to supporting the Lib Dems as they felt the benefits of economic growth – is now dead? It always struck me as a dubious idea. So we are on 8%, have no strategy for improving it, and have a leader that we all expect to resign immediately after the election. Waiting stoically for the catastrophe and planning for the aftermath doesn’t seem like a great idea.
@Charles Rothwell
“We can go on wallowing in how awful the situation is from now until eternity (or at least until May 2015). I think we should be spending the time more constructively. ”
But there wouldn’t have been any ‘wallowing’ on this thread if the article hadn’t appeared in the first place. What is the purpose behind it? Is it a piece of campaign material aimed at increasing the Lib Dem vote? No. Is it advice for improving the effectiveness of campaigning? No. Is it an attempt to defend Nick Clegg by looking for a chink of light that points to a brighter future if only more people would get on board? Quite possibly. Is it an attempt to improve morale by trying to convince people that things aren’t that bad? Quite possibly.
The problem is that those last two reasons have backfired spectacularly because of a curious lack of insight. The ‘things aren’t that bad – oh, yes they are’ argument could have been avoided by not going around saying ‘things aren’t that bad’. I would suggest that someone needs to tell the ‘things aren’t that bad’ brigade to change their message or shut-up if you want to get across the sensible positive campaigning you talk about. This article smacks of a mindset obsessed with defending Clegg to the exclusion of selling principles of your party to the electorate .
we often say it is votes in ballot boxes that count, but here is another fact – nearly all our new members this year are students, sadly for us involved their uni and hardly at home, but surely good news for the party?
I always make contact with a new member, and despite the usually noisy background, i get the distinct impression they have joined us because they have THOUGHT about political issues !!
I am no apologist for the fees debacle, but it gives me some hope for the future.
Well, actually, students don’t hate the Liberal Democrats quite as much as some other demographic groupings…
Hi Pauk, Comm Res has us at 7% this morning, it gets better and better!!!. When will the Party elders wake up.,
Hi Paul, Comm Res has us at 7% this morning, it gets better and better!!!. When will the Party elders wake up.,
Another article highlighting how many youth have deserted the party. Completely depressing, even worse than that is that LDV editors seems to think these numbers are positive! We’ll see how good this is for the party come May, it’s like watching a drunk in a barrel singing sea shanties whilst floating towards the edge of the niagara falls!
“The first thing I would do is identify to whom the Party could appeal again … We then need to drive home a thorough policy review reaffirming where the Party really stands in detail on building a “Fairer society and a stronger economy” and developing a strategy to reestablish our credibility around these policies. … The final step will be making it clear that a new face will be taking over to lead a revived, revitalised and radicalised party at the first practicable opportunity.”
What? The party should make it clear that it’s going to replace its leader as soon as it can, but leave him in place until the election? It makes no sense.
As for the rest of it, small parties can survive electoral unpopularity if they have a clear raison d’etre and a strong set of principles, but to be unpopular without any clear idea of what you stand for is a different matter.
The fact that 13.4% of university students STILL support goes a long way toward demonstrating how far standards are slipping.
Paul in Wokingham is largely right. However, there is no chance of us reconnecting even remotely with a radical, progressive agenda that has been abandoned in the headlong rush to soggy centre-rightism while Nick is our leader. Simply because Nick is only interested in self preservation through his soggy centre-rightrism. Until he goes we will continue to sink, and the longer he takes, the more damage will be done. If he stays to may 2015, the damage will be irreparable.
Alex Marsh spells out the dilemma, as evident in the content of the so-called summer campaign http://www.alexsarchives.org/is-the-summer-campaign-an-admission-of-failure/?utm_content=buffer0c39d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
It would be unfair to select only one of his possible suppositions but if you want fairness you’ll need to read it for yourself (and while you are there link to Dan Falchikov’s powerful piece http://livingonwords.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-new-lib-dem-summer-campaign-is.html )
But here is Alex, “you could read it as saying that some of the policies that many Liberal Democrats would like to see promoted are off the agenda because there’s no way Clegg could credibly be the face of a campaign in which they featured, given the Coalition’s record. Making health care or civil liberties the cornerstone of a campaign, for example, would be to invite ridicule. So as long as Clegg is leader the party’s agenda will have to be steered away from areas in which the party is now indelibly associated with regressive or illiberal change as a result of the Coalition’s activities. Differentiation can only go so far before it shades into implausibility.”
New Ashcroft polling in Lib Dem / Labour marginals makes grim reading.
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/8885#comments
Hardly unexpected but no doubt our dear leader will still claim the power of incumbency will see us safely home.
This is the sort of double think that gets politics a bad name!
Not only did we used to take nearly half of campus votes but our activist base was disproportionately drawn from HE.
The tuition fees debacle saw our MPs betray students generally and our natural supporters disproportionately heavily – it’s the inept understanding of the situation that infuriates me (well, that and the obvious credibility busting element).
@Peter Chegwyn
Last time I looked we were in incumbancy situation in those constituencies polled by Ashcroft!
Seriously, how bad does it have to be before our leaders admit there is a problem, and they are part of the problem.
This fatuous piece is nothing short of propaganda – agree with @Johnmc that this kind of doublethink gives politics a bad name.
When will the nightmare end??
“Hi Paul, Comm Res has us at 7% this morning, it gets better and better!!!. When will the Party elders wake up.,”
They won’t. But they’ll all get a handsome payoff/winding up fee from government to soften the blow.
Good luck constructing an entirely new left of centre, socially liberal but also left wing economically party. You’re going to need all the luck in the world after the last 4 years.
What does “the core strategy with LDs has always been with younger women and students” mean?
It’s vague and poorly-expressed, for a start.
How far back does always go? What kind of core strategy is this – a recognition that people in some groups are statistically more likely to receive us well than others, so we can target some approaches to them? Or something more, something that might drive policy? What does this say for local campaigners who’ve long found a particularly good response among older active people who’ve been in the area some time?