As we move another month closer the killer fact for CON remains: LAB’s vote is still buttressed by LD switchers
The Autumn Statement did nothing to budge them
We are now within 17 months of the election and the overall situation remains the same. Even if all the 2010 CON voters who’ve moved to LAB returned it would make very little difference to Labour’s majority winning vote share. Those 2010 LD switchers remain.
This is the first full parliament where we’ve been able to track voter segments by past vote because the pollsters didn’t start giving us this information until Populus changed the way it presented polling data in the summer of 2007. Now all but Opinium record and report past vote data in this way.
And across the range of pollsters that do the picture about 2010 LD switchers is the same – they make up a big slab of Labour’s support.
- All other analysis and looks at historical precedents are candyfloss compared with this dominant electoral fact. This shift took place in the first year of the coalition and hasn’t changed.
Unless Lynton Crosby and his whizz kids can find a way of shifting the 2010 yellows back home then he’s doomed to failure.
For while LAB remains above 35% the chances of a CON majority are almost nil. The best they can hope for is winning most seats, In all of this the CON-UKIP standoff could make this worse.
The more that Crosby tries to appeal to the UKIP vote the more unappealing he makes the blues to those 2010 LDs who look set to decide the election.