Sunday, April 26, 2009

Is a Lib Dem revival underway?

I reproduce a chart from Anthony Wells' excellent ukpollingreport website showing all the poll figures from every polling organisation since the last election.

Two things strike me as interesting about 2009 to date, the catastrophic drop in Labour support and the recovery in support for the Liberal Democrats.

Nick Cleggs leadership had not been giving the Lib Dems the bounce they might have hoped for. With all the usual caveats - Lib Dem vote shares being lower in the polls than in elections, - Lib Dems always do better during an election campaign than the other parties -etc, the Lib Dems have been struggling to maintain mid teens throughout most of last year which suggested a very dire General Election performance indeed, perhaps halving their representation at Westminster.

However so far in 2009 their polling averages have picked up markedly, late teens at least, which would be enough to preserve maybe 40 existing Lib Dem MP's and gift them a score of new ones from Labour.

The polling suggests that Conservative support begins to top out at around 45% and any further loss of Labour votes seems to be transferring to the Liberal Democrats.

Could it be that we will see at least one poll this year that has the Lib Dems scoring higher than Labour?


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