The Tories are right to take heart from today’s YouGov lead but they’ve still got a huge mountain to climb
The fundamentals remain: LAB’s LD firewall hasn’t been touched
Undoubtedly a CON lead with another pollster, YouGov, is a big moment and given it comes after Cameron’s well received conference speech will give cheer to the blues. This morning’s Sun poll with the Tories 1% ahead means that within the past months Ashcroft, ICM, Ipsos-MORI and now YouGov have all had blue leads at one point or another.
There’s little doubt that Cameron’s speech has been well received and that the Tories left their conference in good heart. They can feel more optimistic and will surely be boosted if they retain Rochester & Strood.
- But the challenge they face cannot be underestimated because Labour’s firewall remains. As the chart shows right across the pollsters the picture’s the same – the 2010 Lib Dem voters who switched to LAB are still there
To recap. Just under one of four of all votes cast in 2010 was for Clegg’s Lib Dems. In the aftermath of the creation of the coalition a large slab, 25%+, of that voted moved from the yellows to the reds a sitiaution that has not changed.
This voting switch is on a huge scale that if it continues makes the Tory task very challenging particularly as the blues have been seeping far more support to UKIP than the red team. This has been the driving force behind the constant LAB leads. EdM’s party has picked up very little support from 2010 CON voters.
What about the SNP threat to LAB in Scotland? The problem is that in only 3 Scottish seats at GE2010 was the SNP within 20% of LAB. None within 10%. There are no SNP-LAB marginals. My view is that they might lose some but on nothing like the scale that has been talked about. John Curtice has a good post putting this into perspective.
So today’s YouGov is a big moment but the challenge is enormous.