If Ashcroft is really correct, Conservative MPs are useless at incumbency

There’s much of interest and wisdom in Lord Ashcroft’s reaction to media reports of internal Tory polling. There is also one very odd comment:

The incumbency factor is well documented, but if it were having a meaningful effect it would have done so in my poll – it would not be necessary to prompt for it by naming the MP.

Michael Ashcroft’s argument being that if you ask someone how they will vote and name the parties rather than the names of the candidates, then that captures the personal votes of those candidates just as well.

He has certainly got a long history of detailed (and expensive!) polling focusing on the Conservatives, and his comment was in the context of the Conservative Party’s MPs, so if his experience is that this makes no difference for them, that’s interesting.

But what makes it odd, is that for Liberal Democrats, polling stretching over decades* shows that naming people rather than just the parties in a voting intention question makes a huge difference.

So if he’s really right, then Conservative MPs are far worse at building up incumbency votes based on their name rather than just their party than Liberal Democrat ones.

He says:

It sounds unlikely that you could transform a double-digit deficit to a two-point lead simply by naming the MP.

Actually, if it’s a Liberal Democrat it’s highly likely.

* Mostly unpublished, to be fair. I had a close role in the party’s key seat polling for several years when working at party HQ, including producing the analysis of the numbers in individual seat polls.