UKIP Euro voters are more than twice as likely to say they’ll support party in general election compared with five years ago
The first data from the 20,000 sample British Election Study
Exactly a year to go and this morning I’m off to London for the launch of the British Election Study – a huge academic exercise involving Manchester/Oxford/Nottingham universities which is monitoring and will produce regular reports on the coming general election.
The chart above is from findings that have been released overnight as a sort of taster. They seek to answer the big unknown – the extent that UKIP support will evaporate over the next year.
The great thing is that they’ve got comparative data. This was monitored last time when, as we all know, UKIP went from 16.5% of the European Parliament vote share to only 3.1% in the General election.
- The great hope for the Tories is that the same thing will happen again. These numbers suggest that it won’t.
Professor Jane Green of Manchester University says: “Our data show that more than half of people, 57.6%, intending to vote for UKIP in the May 2014 European Parliament election also intend to vote for UKIP in the 2015 general election, whereas the proportion was half that number at 25.5% in 2009.
“UKIP European Parliament voters are also more decided about how they will vote in the general election next year than they were about the 2010 general election in 2009.
“These findings could have major implications for the UK’s political landscape in 2015 if they are born out in polling stations.â€
The fieldwork for this study has been carried out by YouGov.
I’ll be reporting further after today’s launch.
Two new Westminster polls overnight, Survation/Mirror & YouGov/Sun both have LAB lead at just 1%
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) May 7, 2014