16 October 2013 17:52 Tim Congdon For many years opinion polls have been the standard barometers of British public opinion between elections. But in recent weeks UKIP party activists have sensed a serious discrepancy between the results of the most well-known opinion polls (which typically have UKIP party support on a bit over 10%, but not much more) and ‘what it feels like on the ground’ when they go out campaigning , leafleting and so on. Certainly in England UKIP has in local government elections been scoring well above the 10% or so indicated by several opinion polls. In the accompanying note (which is available as a document in both Word and PDF formats) I put together the results of all the local government elections since 22nd August and analyse them. The main points are i. The UKIP vote share in the local government elections at 19.0%, well above 11.6% average in the opinion polls taken in the same period, and ii. The UKIP share in the local government elections was almost double that of the Liberal Democrats. My further point is that, since UKIP has more than quintupled its vote share since 2010, it needs only to maintain the same rate of progress over the next two years to become a major player in the 2015 general election. Indeed, if it could persuade one in eight of the LibLabCon’s voters to ‘defect’ to UKIP, it could actually win the 2015 general election! With best wishes, Tim Congdon Economics Spokesman for the UK Independence Party, and runner-up in the 2010 UKIP leadership election
Posted on: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 22:31:35 +0000
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