By Lord Ashcroft
In the latest round of constituency research I have returned to the Liberal Democrat battleground. My study of the most marginal seats the Lib Dems were defending against Labour and the Conservatives, published in June, found the party on course to lose most of its most vulnerable seats, with a few notable exceptions. Over the summer I have looked at seats in England where the Lib Dems are defending bigger majorities to see how vulnerable they are against either rival. (more…)
By Lord Ashcroft
In previous rounds of battleground research I have looked at the twelve most marginal Conservative-held seats with Labour in second place, and the twelve Labour-held seats with the smallest majorities over the Tories. Last month I re-surveyed the Conservative seats, many of which look competitive despite the overall swing to Labour.
The same could not be said of most of the Labour territory included in the first round, where I found Labour leads of up to 21 points. In my latest round of battleground polling I have therefore concentrated on the four Tory targets in which I found the smallest leads in the spring: Birmingham Edgbaston, Bolton West, Hampstead & Kilburn and Southampton Itchen.
Instead of returning to constituencies where Labour were comfortable I have looked at the wider battleground – the second tier of Labour targets with bigger Conservative majorities (more…)
By Lord Ashcroft
In my latest round of battleground research I have returned to the fourteen Conservative-held seats with Labour in second place that I first polled in the spring. The most striking feature is that rising support for UKIP has eroded the swing to Labour. Though the Tories are down a point on their share in March and April in these seats, Labour are down by three points and UKIP are up five.
There are three points worth noting about this. First, the most immediately striking effect of this shift is that UKIP now lead in two seats – Thurrock and Thanet South. They have also jumped to second in Great Yarmouth, where the Tories are now ahead, having been behind Labour in my previous round of polling. (more…)
By Lord Ashcroft
The Liberal Democrats’ vote has fallen by half in constituencies where Labour are their main challengers, according to my latest round of polling in marginal seats.
My research in Bradford East, Brent Central, Manchester Withington and Norwich South found the Lib Dem share down from 38% to 19%, with Labour up 11 points to 47%. This amounts to a swing of 15%, enough in theory for Labour to gain 17 current Lib Dem seats if repeated across the board at an election – though as we saw in my polling of Conservative-Lib Dem marginals, swings are very far from uniform where the Lib Dems are concerned. (more…)
By Lord Ashcroft
At the 2010 general election the Liberal Democrats won 24% of the popular vote. By the end of that year the party’s share in national polls had fallen by half, and it has since shown no sign of recovering. Whether this collapse in national support means the Lib Dems lose a proportionate number of seats is one of the most important factors that will determine the outcome of the next election.
The Lib Dems are famously tenacious local campaigners. Their strategy has long been to build support at constituency level through by-elections and local government, and once elected their incumbents have proved hard to shift. Last year’s Eastleigh by-election showed the party can still mobilise its council base to hold on to a Westminster seat in spite of wider conditions. If they are able to repeat this feat at a general election, could there be rather more Lib Dem MPs in the new House of Commons than the current national polls imply? (more…)
By Lord Ashcroft
Here is the text of my speech to the Conservative Home Spring Conference this afternoon in which I discussed the detail of my latest battleground poll. The slides from my presentation are here.
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Good afternoon, and as the proud proprietor of Conservative Home let me add my welcome to our second annual Spring Conference.
As you will know by now, I am here to tell you what is really going on. (more…)
By Lord Ashcroft
In the last few weeks I have polled more than 26,000 voters in 26 constituencies that will be among the most closely contested between the Conservatives and Labour at the next general election.
Across the battleground I found a 6.5% swing from the Conservatives to Labour – enough to topple 83 Tory MPs and give Ed Miliband a comfortable majority. But this is a snapshot, not a prediction. The research also found that most voters in these seats are optimistic about the economy, and only three in ten would rather see Mr Miliband as Prime Minister than David Cameron. As I have found in the Ashcroft National Poll, half of voters say they may change their mind before the election – and there is still a year to go. (more…)
By Lord Ashcroft
This article first appeared in the Mirror.
From the moment the Lib Dems joined the Conservatives in coalition, the next election was Labour’s to lose. Half the people who had voted for Nick Clegg’s party – many of them wanting to keep the Tories out – went straight to Labour, giving their new leader Ed Miliband a big head start. Worse, from the David Cameron’s point of view, Labour could still win outright with a lower share of the vote than the Tories could – and the Lib Dems locked in Labour’s advantage by blocking a plan to make constituency boundaries fairer.
The trickle of Tory voters towards UKIP has made life even more difficult for Cameron. And as I found in my recent poll of marginal seats, things look even tougher for the Conservatives on the key battlegrounds than they do nationally. Not surprisingly, the bookies have Labour as firm favourites to return to government.
So why, as a Tory, do I think we are in for the closest election for forty years – and that we could see another term of Prime Minister Cameron? (more…)
By Lord Ashcroft
Here is the text of the presentation I gave at the ConHome fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester this week. (more…)
By Lord Ashcroft
For most of the summer Labour’s poll lead has been in single digits. Though enough for victory at a general election, this is hardly a comfortable margin for Ed Miliband at this stage of the parliament – particularly since, as I have found in my previous research, Labour’s support is far from firm.
But as we know, the picture is seldom uniform across the country; the national headline figures can sometimes mask what is happening in marginal seats where elections are won and lost. In the last few weeks I have polled nearly 13,000 voters in the 40 Conservative seats with the smallest majorities: 32 of which the party is defending against Labour, and 8 where the Liberal Democrats came second in 2010. (more…)