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The LibDem Surge is Real – and SW Surrey is Winnable!

 

For the second time this month, a ComRes opinion poll has Liberal Democrats on 20% (the party has not been this high with this pollster since 2010).   A projection by the website Flavible Politics based on this poll, indicates a total of 83 seats for the LibDems at the next election – including (among many more) SW Surrey, Guildford, Mole Valley, Woking and Eshar & Walton)..

(1 – SW Surrey; 2- Guildford; 3- Mole Valley; 4- Woking; 5 – Esher & Walton)

Other polling companies also reflect the LibDem surge. The poll tracking website Britain Elects has a graph that shows the rapid increase in LD support since the May local elections – with the most recent polling suggesting the start of a Swinson surge – just as the Boris bounce appears to have peaked.

The most important polls are not opinion polls, but those at the polling booth – and across the country, in local by-elections since May 2nd, LibDems have taken more votes in total then either the Conservatives, or Labour, as shown in the aggregate totals collected by Election Maps UK:  While the LD share of the vote has gone up by 11%  from the previous results in these wards, the Conservative share has dropped by 4% – and Labour by 8%.

At the parliamentary level, we gained one MP in the Brecon by-election – and six more who have joined us from other parties, in just the past few months. While both the other major parties are hopelessly divided, Liberal Democrats are clearly united and enthusiastic. They have the momentum, and with the wind at their back, a win in South West Surrey, which a short while back seemed impossible, now appears to be increasingly plausible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Can LibDems Take South West Surrey from Hunt?

Lord Ashcroft polls has released a post-election poll of voters’ intentions for the next General Election. Based on his results, Flavible Politics has produced a map of likely results by constituency – and this shows Waverley as a LibDem gain:

Not only SW Surrey either, but also Guildford, Woking, Mole Valley, Esher & Walton and Reigate in Surrey (and a very narrow loss in Elmbridge), and eighty more gains across the country.

Is this even credible? At first glance, clearly not – but let’s look a little deeper.

In the local elections for Waverley borough three weeks ago, the Conservatives took only 38.7% of the total votes cast, against 27.3% for the LibDems, 20.5% for the Farnham Residents Association, 6.8% for Labour and 4.1% for Greens.  But there was in effect a “progressive alliance” between the LibDems, Greens and Labour, taking the total progressive vote to 39.2% – just a fraction behind the Conservatives.

Then, in last week’s EU elections, Liberal Democrats topped the poll on 35%, followed by Brexit on 28.8%, Greens on 14.5%, and Conservatives on only 11.5%! Conventional wisdom is that the EU results were distorted by the dominance of Brexit, but – “it ain’t necessarily so”. Lord Ashcroft’s poll, on which the projection is based, did not only ask about future voting intention, it also enquired about, and analysed, past voting history, in the last general election, as well as last week for the EU.  His analysis showed that while yes, some of those who has switched from Labour or Conservatives to LD, or to Farrage’s Brexit, would return to their original party for a general election – not all of them would. Hence, Conservatives would not recover to their earlier level of support – and Liberal Democrats would retain a substantial share of their newfound (or newly returned) supporters.

If this projection turns out to be sound, that would create the extraordinary situation where nationally, just 4% would separate four parties:

Of course, it’s not that simple: what voters tell pollsters they will do, and what they actually do, are often very different – especially when the next general election could be a long way off. Circumstances will change, new events will get in the way. But what is surely true, and will remain so, is that we are in a period of remarkable fluidity in British politics, where extraordinary developments have come to seem almost commonplace: who would have predicted just three months ago, that we would end up with 16 MEPs?

The idea of Liberal Democrats wining SW Surrey in the next general election may well be just too fanciful to be taken seriously – but the possibility of getting at least much closer, is surely not.