Vote Green, Go Blue?
The Greens might need to stop being seen as a single issue party if they want to have more than one MP.
YouGov have carried out some polling into the Greens which can be found here. The above tweets are a small section of the findings, the entire Twitter thread is worth a read. We learn things like the voters currently have a more favourable opinion of the Greens than the other main parties which might explain why the Greens are polling as high as 9/10 per cent with some pollsters.
What really caught my attention was from the above tweets are the perceptions about the Greens seen as a single issue party, given the quasi religious deference to the NHS amongst the voters being a party where 42% of voters thinking the Greens care more about the environment than the NHS is a sub-optimal position for the Greens to be in, the figures are even worse for growing the economy or reducing crime. That makes me wonder the closer we get to an election the support for the Greens will go down from current voting intentions.
With Boris Johnson’s determined to make a clear link between being more environmentally conscious and ordinary Brits having to pay a lot then I wonder the Greens will see their support erode further. History has shown Britons like telling pollsters they will vote for parties that will increase taxes but seldom do so.
The Green vote share at the next election might be the difference between Sir Keir Starmer becoming Prime Minister or not.
TSE
PS – This piece is focussing mainly on the English & Welsh Greens. In Scotland the Green Party is pro independence and currently in a coalition that isn’t a coalition with the SNP makes it inelegant to lump all the Green Parties of Britain as one homogenous group. Staunch Unionists who are environmentally conscious are unlikely to vote for the secessionist Greens, a dynamic that isn’t really an issue in England & Wales