One John Rentoul article, two questions

It is hardly a surprise to read a piece from John Rentoul in The Independent painting a bleak picture for the Liberal Democrats, but there are two particular puzzles about today’s article:

no one has cast real votes in real ballot boxes since the Sedgefield and Ealing Southall by-elections

Err, local council by-elections anyone? If in your view by-elections don’t count as ‘real votes in real ballot boxes’, the logic applies just as much to local as Westminster by-elections. If they do count, well then once again the logic applies just as much to local as Westminster by-elections. It’s really rather difficult to see how you can count one whilst discounting the other as being ‘real votes in real ballot boxes’.

Looking at council by-election would, mind you, paint a rather different picture, what with there having been many good Liberal Democrat results in council by-elections during the period in which Rentoul is saying has been all doom and gloom for the party. And that brings us to:

What is most surprising is that the election of Clegg just before Christmas had no effect on Lib- Dem standing.

In brief: not so.

At greater length: let’s have a look at what the opinion polls tell us about the situation in December compared with now and looking at the fieldwork (rather than publication) dates of polls.

ComRes: 16% in December, 17% in latest poll (March); change +1
ICM: 18%, 20% (April); +2
MORI: 14%, 19% (April); +5
Populus: 16%, 19% (April);+3
YouGov: 15% (average of three polls), 17% (April); +2

Overall: 15.8%, 18.4%; +2.6

The months running up to the 2005 general election are as good a benchmark as any to compare these ratings with. In all the polls in January, February and March 2005 the party averaged just over 20% in the polls. In other words, in the few months since Nick Clegg was elected leader the party has closed approaching two-thirds of this gap. Not bad going really.

(By the way, although a change of, say +1, in one individual poll should be treated with caution given the margins of error, the consistency of the picture across a large number of polls means you can safely draw conclusions, and the overall picture of steady growth in party support is reflected across the whole period: this isn’t just an artifact of the polls used in the table above.)

Of course, you might take a different view about whether 2005 is an appropriate benchmark on whether approaching two-thirds is enough so far, but it is hard to see how you can say there has been “no effect”.