Liberal Democrat opinion poll ratings are consistently on the up

I’ve commented a few times recently on the gradually rising Liberal Democrat poll ratings.

One way of looking at this is to ask when the party was last higher than its current ratings with each of the pollsters. The answer to that is:

• ComRes: May 2017
• ICM: May 2017
• Kantar TNS: May 2017
• Opinium: April 2017
• Survation: April 2017
• YouGov: April 2017
• Ipsos-MORI: December 2016
• BMG: highest on record (!) – 18 polls this Parliament but only a few prior to that
• Deltapoll: highest on record but only 2 polls this Parliament

There is still a very long way to go in the party’s recovery, but the steady improvement in them has, so far, largely gone without notice in the media. (As has the decline in two-party politics.)

Read coverage of the recent party conference (sexed-up or not), for example, and you’ll see almost no reference to ‘but the party’s ratings are higher than they were a year ago’ or anything similar.

But if that Lib Dem rise continues, it’ll start becoming hard to ignore.