Political

New constituency poll shows Liberal Democrats leading in Portsmouth South

A fourth constituency opinion poll carried out by Survation and commissioned by the Liberal Democrats has been released today, this time for Portsmouth South.

It shows the Liberal Democrats moving up into first place:

Survation opinion poll for Portsmouth South constituency

Note: the Survation graphic contains a small error as the drop in the Conservative Party vote share is 11 points (down from 38% in 2017).

The same caveats as before very much apply and the full data tables are available.

One consistent pattern across all four of them (the others being Cambridge, Finchley and Golders Green and North East Somerset) is that there are large swings matching the national political situation. As reflected in the current national polls, the MRP analysis from Best for Britain, the local election results and the Euro election results this year, the current popularity of parties has changed significantly from 2017. Each of those four different pieces of evidence points the same way.

Hence, as all this different evidence points to, the 2017 result in a seat is not some magic, case-closed proof of who is currently in contention.

9 responses to “New constituency poll shows Liberal Democrats leading in Portsmouth South”

  1. Thankfully the question was reasonable and not ‘If the LibDems were the only party standing who would you vote for?’ 🙂
    I’m being facetious but we need to always remember “We’re the good guys, right?”

    • No he isn’t. Just turns up for photo-ops. Says the Lib Dems are ‘the opposition’, and votes with the Tories on the council against the Lib Dems. Also he has flipped flop on the referendum. At the last General Election he was arging against the Lib Dems call for a Referendum. Surely the tactical vote now would mean voting FOR the Lib Dems, if Labour are trailing back in third place again.

  2. @Ian

    I am pretty convinced that this will be won by either the Lib Dems or Tories. On the detailed tables in the two “north” wards in the city – one of which of Morgan (the Labour MP) represents on the city council Labour are in 4th place! Equally the Lib Dems are picking up just a shade under 50% of the Remain vote across the city.

  3. Extremely interesting. I do some analysis and prediction on how the seats will be shared basis on the percentage swing from each party to another in each seat and would have had us in 2nd place in a very close 3 horse race. So it is promising to see that we’d win that seat. What it suggests is that Lib Dems are gaining more votes in areas where they still had a good vote share (even if in 3rd place with 17.3%) in 2017 relative to areas where they don’t. This could be due to either one or both of two things: 1) Tactical votes are coming into play. 2) Revoke A50 is a popular policy and people will vote for it in areas where the Lib Dems have a decent presence. As a result, the Lib Dems could over perform in remain areas where they have a decent presence and will under perform where they don’t.

    There is a slight worry though that the recent polls are suggesting a swing away from Lib Dems to Labour again. Perhaps due to voters normally migrating back to their comfort zone during an election or perhaps because Labour and Conservatives have had a head start and largely been able to drown out the rest of the crowd. Let’s hope that changes!

  4. Hi Mark, with regard to your reference to MRP and Best for Britain, I have just looked at the Best for Britain tactical voting site. For my constituency in Battersea, it has MRP prediction based on no tactical voting as Lib Dems neck and neck with Conservatives on 32% each and Labour behind on 26%. However, it suggests that I should vote Labour and that will swing Labour into the lead with 37%. That can’t be right. Unless it suggests that Labour voters are less likely to tactically vote in that area…I just don’t want us to be losing out on this election opportunity! I’m in the process of contacting them…

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