The Telegraph reports this new poll today and has a comment from the election poll guru Anthony King. It is being discussed across at ConservativeHome.
"Only eight per cent of YouGov's sample," writes Anthony King, "would
like to see him (Ming Campbell) in Downing Street - the lowest recorded for any Lib Dem
leader since the Liberal Democrats effectively replaced the old
Liberal-SDP Alliance in 1990."
In fact the LibDems are nearly being caught by the "others"!
However the bit that caught my eye was the last paragraph and my concern that all parties need to do soemthing to address this problem and I have heard little that enthralls me.
"As must be evident, far fewer voters than in the past are bewitched by
any one party. Far more are bothered and bewildered by the whole lot.
Labour is clearly in trouble but so is Britain's whole political class."
The Conservatives now have the largest lead over Labour since the 1992 general Election victory.
5 comments:
It makes you wonder whether the Lib Dems will even be able to wait until their Annual Conference before they have another leadership contest? What would be worse for them - having their popularity fall gradually because of Ming, or to be made into a joke by having a leadership contest so soon?
As the Conservatives experienced there's nothing worse than having an inadequate leader in post - it may be painful but the sooner the amputation occurs the easier it will be for the party to recover.
What I wonder is, how do these figures reflect the reality of a general election, which gives Labour the advantage, even if we win a larger percentage share of the vote.
Isn't the point that whilst Labour is languishing from one fiasco after another and the Lib-Dems have chosen the "best" of an abysmal choice of candidates, the Tories are only riding high (except in Richmond & Kingston) because of there being no other party in which voters can have an ounce of faith?
Ellee, I was reading an article on Cameron this morning that covered just that point. He said that if we were to have a General Election and the Conservatives were ahead on 40 with Labour on 31, Labour would still win. It would require the Conservatives to have around 43/44% to gain a victory.
Its an astonishing set of figures, but a fact of life - Cameron wasn't griping about it, which I'm glad about. The Conservatives just have to keep moving up and get that support. In the intersts of democracy that can be nothing but good.
The Tories in Kingston are very pleased at the moment. The painful death of the Kingston Lib Dems has begun with not only their voters but their activists deserting them. As Ian McDonald was heard to say on election night: "Why are all these Lib Dems voting Conservative?" The answer Ian, is that they are not lib Dems; they are the Conservatives returning to a sensible party that is capable of forming a Government.
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