A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

Monday, February 16, 2009

What's the real level of Lib Dem support?

Recent opinion polls are a bit contradictory.

The two at the weekend both had the Tories in about the same place (low to mid 40s) but online pollster YouGov found 32% support for Labour and just 14% for the Lib Dems, whilst phone pollster ComRes had us on a derisory 25% and the LDs on 22%.

The council by-election results I report every Friday are not picking up an LD surge, but that could be because they are a fairly random sample (though they tracked the Brown first bounce in summer and early autumn 2007 fairly closely, and the subsequent fall in Labour support).

Is anyone (perhaps Tories would be objective third party witnesses as this is about the ratio between Labour and LD support?) picking up the LD high support shown by ComRes in their local canvassing?

10 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Council elections don't reflect national opinion, you should know that from the last three elections.

I think the likes of Vince Gable has done a lot for getting more support for the Lib Dems....the man has been talking a lot of sense.

The problem with the current situation is that no one is really brave enough to come up with an alternative idea. In such a regime the opposition will almost certainly benefit particularly if you have a shadow chancellor like Vince who predicted the current mess.

7:49 pm, February 16, 2009

 
Blogger Merseymike said...

Makes you wonder why the LD's don't ditch the useless Clegg and replace him with Cable.

11:50 pm, February 16, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm not sure if the polls can be trusted one way or the other at the moment anyway given how volatile they've been of late.

10:56 am, February 17, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Much higher than 14%;

and probably lower than 22% - for now

12:50 pm, February 17, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

An extremely pedantic point - the problem with the council by-elections is not that they're random, it's that they're non-random. A true random sample could be assumed to be representative, within a margin of error.
Good post otherwise.

12:59 pm, February 17, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

New Mori Poll:

Con: 48%

Lab: 28%

Lib: 17%

Probably close to the truth!

1:35 pm, February 17, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's easy to forget that Cable isn't the leader of the Lib Dems when he gets so much more coverage & actually gives the impression he knows what he's talking about with regards the economy

5:51 pm, February 17, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have a lot of respect for Vince Cable as he has been the only MP to stick his neck before we even hit this crisis.

His concerns with national debt and high risking taking were obviously well founded.

The government really should take a look back over the last 15 months and take stock. Gordon has got it wrong on more than one occassion....when is he acually going to admit that the UK is in a mess.

7:45 pm, February 17, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Isn't it just a question of time before the Lib Dems overtake Labour?

12:10 am, February 18, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm not convinced Lib Dems will overtake Labour before the next election. I'm not really a fan of Clegg, you don't really here a lot from the man.

If Clegg had stuck to the party line then this country would almost certainly have had a vote on the treaty.

I predict the conservatives will take power with a huge majority in 2010 and will be in power for just one term.

Then I think you may be looking at a Lib Dem government or some form of power sharing.

5:39 pm, February 18, 2009

 

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