Labour has a lot to do if it wants to win the next election. A mid-term coalition government has recovered ground in the more recent opinion polls. Boundary changes will almost certainly act to the benefit of the Conservative Party - even if the distribution of Labour voters is such that is will maintain what is sometime erroneously described as a 'bias' in the system towards the party. (Incidentally, a component of this is the fact that in our first part the post system, Labour seats, with naturally lower turnouts, will generally return MPs with a smaller number of votes that Tory MPs will muster from their more affluent
constituencies - worth noting the context of support amongst the wider Tory Party for the current voting system).
At the same time, Ed Miliband's personal ratings are low (although arguably in better shape than Cameron's were a year after he won the Conservative leadership race whilst in opposition).
This blog aims to track the progress of the UK parties in the polls, but
focussing particularly on an often overlooked part of the polling landscape: the views of voters from all political hues on key issues. Both the Conservative-leaning press and the liberal media have their own take on what people outside the 'Westminster village' think about major areas of policy. However, the oft-quoted 'silent majority' is often lazy shorthand used by columnists to attribute their prejudices and biases to the wider population.
Frequently, the views that the general public to give are surprising: Tory voters lending their support to very un-Conservative policies, and Labour voters expressing views that wouldn't be out of place on a Daily Mail comment page.
To start with, we'll take
this interesting poll undertaken on behalf of the IPPR. It posed an interesting question to try to gauge the 'pool' of potential voters that each of the three main parties had (graph above). When asked whether they would 'never' choose to vote for a particular party, 30% chose Labour, 39% the Liberal Democrat and 42% the Conservative Party.
There were, within this, the patterns familiar to any regular follower of polls: anti-Labour feeling was strongest in the south (outside of London) and amongst the oldest voters. Meanwhile, the Tories have an exceptionally hard time if they hope to win back Scotland, for example.
It is, though, an interesting idea: although Labour voters tend to be the hardest to persuade to come out and vote, the Conservative Party - at least if this poll is accurate - has a smaller pool of potential voters that it can win to its cause. Whether this is a short-term consequence of being in power, or a longer-term issue with 'toxicity' remains to be seen.
