Since the Syria vote a lot of the attention and comment has been focussed upon the Leadership of Dave and Ed, trying to work who was and will be the winner and the loser from the Syria vote. But what of Nick Clegg? He was dealt a damaging blow to his leadership as 24 out of his 57 MPs, including the Party President Tim Farron, revolted over his backing of military intervention in Syria. Tim Farron has a history of not…
New PB thread looking at betting on Lib Dem deposit losses at the 2015 GE. http://t.co/FR0XvQI0M3 pic.twitter.com/EEpQPAakBj — TSEofPB (@TSEofPB) August 23, 2013 A couple of weeks ago, Mike wrote about the potential number of Lib Dem lost deposits in 2015 and how the total of lost LD deposits which, if local trends continue, could run into the hundreds. Now in 2010, the Liberal Democrats didn’t lose any deposits, whilst the the Conservatives lost just two deposits and Labour lost five…
With recent polls putting the Liberal Democrats at 10% of the national vote (in a virtual tie with UKIP and half their general election vote in 2010), it is safe to say that most Liberal Democrat activists are starting to get just a little on the edgy side about the next election (now less than 21 months away, assuming there isn’t a vote of no confidence as in Germany a few years ago). The most recent polls suggest that Labour…
One feature of the recent bout of local by-elections as well as last week’s Welsh Assembly contest in Ynys Mons has been the huge collapse in the Lib Dem vote. At the Merton LBC by-election yesterday at Colliers Wood the party’s vote share slumped by 15.1% to just 2.2%. At Skelton in Redcar and Cleveland the drop was 11.3% to just 2.5%. What we are seeing is the product of the party’s GE2015 defence strategy of only focusing on those…
The incumbency experience for the yellows at GE2010 There’s been some discussion over the weekend about the impact of incumbency and how it can help the parties achieve better outcomes in terms of seats won than the uniform swing might suggest. In a post on Saturday I looked at the GE2010 experience of the Tories and Labour. Today’s it’s the turn of the Lib Dems and the chart above shows how it performed on average in different types of seats…
55% of LD members polled want Clegg to lead the party into GE2015 while 38% want him to stand down before then. — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 26, 2013 58% of LD members polled by LD voice say they're satisfied with Clegg’s leadership a net +18. A year ago the same poll had a minus 2 rating — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 26, 2013 Maybe this just reflects declining membership Every year in the run-up to conference season the LD Voice…
Henry G Manson on the junior coalition partner This summer Nick Clegg said he wants his party to become a “fully-fledged party of governmentâ€. Despite that his party faces wipeout in 2014 and 2015 on top of the electoral hammer blows it’s received since it formed a Coalition with the Conservatives. More than half of the people who voted for the Liberal Democrats in 2010 have deserted them. The party has fewer than 3,000 councillors for the first time in…
Local factors could mean they’ll be as hard to shift as ever The biggest and longest-lasting movement in opinion polling since the 2010 general election has been the loss of at least half of the Lib Dem vote, most of which has gone to Labour. By contrast, despite the spending restraint and what at times has been a strained relationship between the Conservatives and their traditional supporters, the last YouGov poll showed only a 1% direct net swing from Con…