Let’s end this lazy assumption that UKIP voters are just Tories on holiday
The numbers show that this is simply not the case
You read and see this all the time both inside the Westminster bubble and out of it. Ukip voters, so the pervasive narrative goes, are simply ex-CON voters who can, if Lynton Crosby plays his cards properly, be seduced back into the fold thus providing the blues with the platform to secure an overall majority next May.
Thus the following is a statement that many might find hard to comprehend because it runs right across this current thinking
- Even if the Tories were able to win back half their UKIP defectors it would add barely 1.5% to current vote shares.
The reason why that doesn’t sound right is that one of the basic widely perceived “facts” of modern politics does not stand up to scrutiny.
Just look at breakdown in the pie chart above of current UKIP support in the marginals based on the latest data from Ashchroft polling. 2010 CON voters form only a quarter of UKIP support in the key LAB-CON marginals. If the Tories were able to win back half of them that would make up about one eighth of the kippers – and one eighth of the 13% UKIP figure in this polling is not going to make that much difference.
We see the same broad breakdown in standard national polling yet somehow so many cling to this “belief” so central to any analysis of GE2015.
Let me say that I, like so many others, have been guilty of making the wrong assumptions about where UKIP support is coming from.
Trying to win the kippers back is certainly something that the Tories should be doing but there are far far fewer ex-CON voters to be “swung back” than is widely assumed.