By Lord Ashcroft
In The Leadership Factor I have looked in depth at how voters see each of the three party leaders, and the extent to which each leader is an asset or a liability for their party – a draw or a drag.
Liberal Democrats
The Leadership Factor
It was right for the Tories not to waste money in Oldham
By Lord Ashcroft
Two principal questions are preoccupying Conservative commentators about the result from Oldham East & Saddleworth by-election. First, was the Liberal Democrat vote share largely due to tactical voting by previous Conservative supporters? Second, would a bigger Conservative presence on the campaign trail have made any significant difference to the result? I decided to find out over the weekend by re-polling 500 of the voters who took part in my pre-election survey (which turned out to be very accurate). The answers to the questions are: yes, and almost certainly not.
Labour set to hold Oldham East & Saddleworth
By Lord Ashcroft
Labour look set to hold the Oldham East & Saddleworth seat rather more comfortably than they did at the general election. For all the speculation, this by-election was always Labour’s to lose.
What Future For The Liberal Democrats?
By Lord Ashcroft
The Liberal Democrats have suffered a slump in the polls since their decision to enter a coalition government with the Conservatives. Some have argued that the Lib Dems are finished as an independent party capable of winning significant support at elections, but I suspected things might not be as straightforward as that. I have conducted research among those who voted Lib Dem in 2010, and those who thought about doing so but decided not to, to find some clues about the party’s future.
Swing from Lib Dems threatens Clegg and Huhne
By Lord Ashcroft
Though the Liberal Democrats achieved 24% of the vote in Great Britain at the general election, no poll since late June has put Nick Clegg’s party above 18%. Some have put them at less than half of their 6 May vote share. In July I published research conducted in marginal constituencies showing that 30 of the Lib Dems’ 57 seats were vulnerable to the Conservatives. More recently I have looked into whether the apparent meltdown would have the same effect on senior Liberal Democrats in the coalition. The answer is that their prominence has not made them immune from the decline in support for their party.
Could the Lib Dem marginal meltdown mean the Tories gain from A.V.?
By Lord Ashcroft
A referendum on the Alternative Vote is currently planned for 5 May 2011. The pollsters have turned their attention to the likely ramifications should the public decide to adopt such a system for general elections. There has been a widespread assumption that the Conservatives have nothing to gain from electoral reform, and the work that has been done so far – such as the YouGov poll for the Spectator earlier this month – has indeed suggested that the Tories would be the biggest net losers when comparing A.V. with First Past The Post (FPTP). As ever, though, national polls can only tell us so much – it would be in the marginal seats that A.V. would make a decisive difference. Would voters in these seats behave differently under the two systems? And would the effect be different depending which parties were in contention?