The collapse in Lib Dem support is the most dramatic feature of the party landscape since last year’s election. Recent YouGov polls have shown Labour up around 12 points since last May and the Lib Dems down 14 points. Support for the Conservatives has scarcely moved—and very few voters have switched between the two main parties.
YouGov’s most recent nationwide survey, involving nearly 50,000 people, shows that as many as 69 per cent of Lib Dem voters have deserted the party since last May. But so have 24 per cent of Tories and 16 per cent of Labour voters. Labour is the only one of the three main parties whose recruits outweigh its deserters.
Of the Lib Dem deserters, 2m would now vote Labour, and 1.3m now don’t know—although bear in mind that most of the 2m who have switched to Labour are Labour identifiers (people who “generally” think of themselves as Labour) returning home since the last election.
Who are deserting the Lib Dems in greatest number? As one might expect, the party has lost ground most spectacularly among students, Guardian or Independent readers, those who identify themselves as very or fairly left wing, and trade union members. Yet it has even lost support among Sun and Daily Mail readers, a traditionally more right-wing base.
However, these bald figures conceal a much wider set of movements. Some 29m Britons voted last May. Almost 10m would behave differently if an election were held now. Labour has gained ground overall—but 1.4m people who voted for the party last May would not do so today. Even though Nick Clegg has seen his party haemorrhage support over the past 12 months, there are 600,000 people who did not vote Lib Dem last May who would do so now.
That said, such a dramatic fall in support is undeniably bad news for Clegg. He was able to woo voters last year, as previous Lib Dem leaders had done, by presenting his party as a progressive force that could keep the Conservatives at bay. Such an appeal has not succeeded so far in the local election campaign this year, and seems unlikely to do so at the next general election. Unless he can secure a new tranche of votes, from the centre and right-of-centre, his party seems doomed to suffer—certainly for as long as it is in coalition with the Conservatives.
Matthew Evans
Couldn’t happen to a nicer set of people. All that is needed for perfection is a No vote to AV, which would be good anyway. Then when the Liberals disappear we will have a proper two party system where voters can make a serious choice.
Edward Harkins
The 2011 Barnsley by-election result, together with all the current polling returns, do imply that there is the potential of a, probably momentous, process with significant and permanent repercussions for the Lib Dems arising out of their participation in the Conservative-led Coalition.
The recent, and excellent, BBC Parliament channel programme on coalitions in 20th century UK politics, provided a couple of telling realities. The first was the substantial period of time that the UK was ruled by coalition governments; something that the popular political media and (consequently?) the electorate seem generally unaware of.
The second reality was that participation in the inter-war UK National Government was what in the end truly ended the Liberals’ credibility as a potential UK governing party. (The more conventional view being that it was the preceding rise of the Labour Party alone that was the singular fatal factor for the Liberals). That National Government coalition was, of course, led initially by Labour ‘Leader’ Ramsey MacDonald, but was quickly suborned by the Conservatives.
Not only did the electorate at large reject the Liberals because of their coalition with the Tories; a large element of their own (still significant) party also did so. The consequent rift generated the so-called ‘National’ Liberal Party and the other Liberal Party.
Liberals continued to serve in the National Government and the subsequent Administrations right up until the end of the WW2 wartime coalition. But the party was never again a credible contender for power in its own right. The Liberals’ acceptance of David Cameron’s ‘Big Offer’ now seems, ironically, to have ensured a repeat of the scenario where the Liberal Dems are shunned by the electorate – and many erstwhile Liberal Party members alike.
The issues might now be, will the Lib Dems survive this time around as anything other than a very marginalised, narrow-constituency, small party aka BNP. UKIP etc.? And, given the incipient/potential anti-Tory backlash, what would the impact be in the Lib Dems’ traditional strongholds in Scotland and the West Country etc? Right now in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, Alex Salmond’s SNP is conducting forays into what were until recently the unassailable heartlands (i.e. East Fife) of the Lib Dems in Scotland.