Will being tough on crime/immigrants win Tory converts?
Or are we seeing a core votes strategy?
The chart shows the party splits in today’s YouGov “Issues facing you/your family findings and shows a vast difference in the view of what’s important between supporters of the three parties in four key areas.
Thus on immigration Tory voters are seven times more likely to be concerned than Lib Dem ones who registered just three percent. Today’s results on the environment are almost exactly a mirror image with LD being seven times more concerned than Tories.
Cameron has been stressing that the policies the government has been able to pursue has been constrained by the coalition and yesterday we had the U-turn on penal policy
The YouGov results are similar to that we have seen from other pollsters and suggest his primary audiences for the rhetoric are those the Tories already have on board.
If the blues are to edge beyond the mid 30s then they need converts and I wonder if adopting a Michael Howard approach is a winning strategy?
That hardly worked in 2005 and I am far from convinced that it will work now. How does going out of your way to appear tough fit with the detoxification strategy
Maybe the Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, had this right all along?