What do the Liberal Democrats and Ukip have in common? According to the second round of Survation’s constituency polling, they are both locally outperforming their national trends. Thanks to the Ukip donor Alan Bown, we can see how the seats of Great Grimsby and Dudley North would vote, were there a general election tomorrow:
These seats are important because they are numbers nine and ten on the Conservatives’ target list for the 2015 election (requiring a one per cent swing to win). Both suggest some worrying trends for the Tories. Since 2010, Labour’s voting share has risen by six/seven points, while the Conservatives have dropped 11/12 points. The Lib Dems have dropped nine points in both while Ukip have risen by 16 and 14 points respectively.
Combining these consistency polls, and comparing to a national swing (taken from a UK Polling Report average), we can see how the parties are performing locally vs. nationally:
As the chart shows, Labour and the Conservatives are behind the national swing while Ukip and the Lib Dems are over-performing. The constituency polling suggests that the collapse of the Liberal Democrats may not be as great as headline figures suggest, even without taking into consideration the strength of their ground operation.
Secondly, Ukip are still doing well and not entirely by carving up the Tory vote. Survation also reports that in these two constituencies, 70 per cent of Ukip voters did not vote Conservative in 2010 — 10 per cent came from Labour while 20 per cent didn’t vote for any other party. Ex-Tories still make up a significant bulk of Ukip supporters but will those non-voters stick around to vote Ukip in 2015? Or will they disappear once again?
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