The outstanding question from yesterday: How will CON GE2017 Remainers react to the deal with Farage?
The Farage gamble could come at a price
One group of voters who seems to have been by-passed by current events are the 31% of GE2017 CON voters who backed Remain in the referendum. All the focus has been on leavers.
The chart above is based on the latest Deltapoll shows their current voting intentions and as can be seen more than two third of them were still backing the party of Johnson. But that fieldwork took place before yesterday’s dramatic move.
How are they going to perceive the deal with Farage and all that says about the approach of the leadership? On the one hand their party looks set to fare better on December 12th but could for some being seen to work with Farage be a step too far?
This will be a polling cross-break that we’ll study closely in the next few weeks.
Many of the CON remainers are in the strong remain voting seats which are on the LD target list and, no doubt, they are going to be reminded strongly over the next four weeks about the Farage link.
Most of the constituencies are in Greater London or just beyond. These are the Richmonds, Wokinghams and even the Foreign Secretary’s seat in Esher. They are places where Farage’s parties have struggled in the past and where, pre-coalition, LAB was a distant third. They voted Remain by margins which suggest that perhaps half the Tory voters in these constituencies went this way.
How GE2017 CON Remainers respond could be the key to the final result. There are almost the same number of CON remainers as LAB Leavers.