The verdict of Liberal Democrat voters so far

What annoyed me most was that they had intelligent policies and were not dogmatic, so I thought ‘how could you possibly go into coalition with the Tories?’

That quote, from a voter in a Liberal Democrat held seat, neatly summarises a view that is both held passionately by many Liberal Democrat voters but also irritates many Liberal Democrat members – for the obvious riposte is, “How can you both say we shouldn’t be dogmatic and also insist we rule out one party regardless of circumstances?”

It comes from a set of focus groups commissioned by Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft, along with two opinion polls – one of people who had voted Liberal Democrat in May and one of people who had seriously considered doing so, but in the end didn’t vote Lib Dem. Not all of the analysis is as rigorous as it should be, such as the discussion of the number of people who voted Liberal Democrat for negative rather than positive reasons as if everyone who votes for other parties only votes for them for positive reasons.

Also unmentioned is that consistently over the last several general elections, only around half of those who voted Liberal Democrat at one general election then voted Lib Dem again at the next. In that context, the numbers of people who say they voted Lib Dem but will not next time are not necessarily significantly new; perhaps the question is more about why the sources of new support which have more than compensated for those switches away after previous elections are largely drying up this time. Ashcroft’s research does not throw a light onto this.

What it does show is that nearly two thirds (62%) of Liberal Democrat voters say they would have still voted the same way if they had known the outcome would be a coalition with the Tories, though it is just under half (49%) who say that going into government with the Conservatives was the right thing to do. Just over half (55%) of those who thought about voting Lib Dem but didn’t in the end also think that forming the coalition was the right thing to do.

Looking to the next election, less than a third (28%) put a continuation of the coalition as their preferred outcome, only slightly higher than the quarter (24%) who want to see a Labour/Lib Dem coalition.

Considering what the party stands for, ‘fairness’ was the most common answer from the focus group members though many people struggled to give a full answer to the question. However, a majority of both Lib Dem voters and those who thought about voting Lib Dem rejected statements such as that the Lib Dems “don’t really have any principles, they are just going along with what the Conservatives want in return for some jobs in the government”.

In most policy areas, more people thought the party had made no difference than had made policies better or worse. Welfare reform and the environment see the biggest leads for those who think things have been made better over those who think policies have been made worse by Liberal Democrat involvement (37-19 and 32-21 amongst Lib Dem voters and 33-17 and 29-7 amongst Lib Dem considerers). Defence and tuition fees are the two with the largest leads for those who think policies have been made worse (17-26 and 11-49 amongst Lib Dem voters and 12-27 and 13-18 amongst considerers).

In the focus groups, several said they thought the Lib Dems had a general moderating influence on the Conservatives or had “softened the blow” of spending cuts, but few were able to name specific examples. Two-thirds of Lib Dems backed the overall plans to cut spending and the deficit, but many are concerned about the speed of the cuts.

For more on the polling, see the ConservativeHome report.