What can we learn from the “Supervoters”?

The above data is from yesterday’s poll and shows how votes are churning between the main three parties from those who told the firm how they voted in 2005.

In a previous post I’ve called this group the”super-voters” because those with a record of turning out at a previous general elections are, surely, much more likely to turnout at the next one?

This has never been tested before. ICM only started providing this information a year ago and ComRes and Populus have followed suit in the past few months.

The figures in the rows show how respondents say they will vote next time – the columns show how they said they voted last time.

There are two features of the above numbers that are note-worthy. Firstly that the Tories are doing substantially better than Labour at retaining their 2005 vote and in attracting support from Labour and the Lib Dems. Cameron’s party is a substantial net gainer of support – the other two are net losers.

The second point is based on how the Lib Dem support is splitting. This could be of significance depending on the outcome of the Huhne-Clegg contest. With 18% of 2005 Lib Dem voters saying they now would vote Tory
compared with only 12% saying they would vote Labour then the Tories appear much more vulnerable to any new leader bounce.

From a betting perspective Tory backers and Labour sellers on the spread markets are going to have to be ultra-careful following the announcement of the Lib Dem result on December 17th. My guess is that there will be a Lib Dem polling bounce and that the Tories will take the biggest hit.

Every time I put data like this up people say that the sub-set sizes are small. That’s a fair point but when you look at these figures in the context of others recent polls the patterns are broadly the same.

Mike Smithson