Second Eastleigh poll: neck and neck again, this time Lib Dems nominally in front
The second Eastleigh by-election poll is out today, showing this time the Liberal Democrats ahead of the Conservatives.
As with the first poll, the gap between the parties is a statistically insignificant sliver.
Notable this time is that Labour is in fourth behind UKIP, despite some of Labour’s belated talking up of its prospects:
@mrjohnofarrell @anthonypainter John, you'd be a great candidate for Eastleigh and we'll all pile in to help
— Polly Toynbee (@pollytoynbee) February 9, 2013
Belated, because we’ve already had Alan Johnson say Labour won’t win and a Labour councillor say the best result would be a Liberal Democrat victory.
Also of interest in the poll is this:
The Chris Huhne scandal appears to have only slightly dented Liberal Democrat support, with 70% of people and 86% of Liberal Democrat voters saying it would make no difference to their vote at all.
The Liberal Democrat candidate, selected last night, is Mike Thornton – a local councillor and chair of the local party. If you know fellow Eastleigh councillor and former London Assembly member Louise Bloom, you’ll also know that she speaks so extremely highly of him is also a very good sign of his credentials.
Good luck to the L/D Candidate Cllr Mike Thornton and I urge all `die-hard' Campaigners to travel to Eastleigh to help record the latest L/D By-Election victory putting the local people first.
And less die hard ones too!
All welcome !
Aside from the inevitable de-politicised hyper-localised issues so central to the LD bye-election playbook, do you think the party might look to actually articulate its achievements at a national level? And not just shaving the sharp edges off selected pieces of Tory legisation? I'm all agog with anticipation……
Tax – and in particular the move towards a £10,000 income tax allowance – looks to be featuring strongly in the campaign so far.
Ahem…really interesting.
Hmm. So an aspiration (a promisory note) which is increasingly irrelevant to those who are unemployed or underemployed, but who wish to work? I appreciate that Eastleigh is fairly well-off, but this is not wetting, leaving alone floating, my boat……
Someone in, say, a full time job on the minimum wage will have benefited from the income tax cuts. I wouldn't count them as "fairly well-off". It's also an indirect benefit for those seeking work as lower income tax means the financial gain from working is that much bigger – and the potential poverty trap that much smaller.
And presumably that person would also be losing tax credits (especially if they cna't work 24 hours a week 'cos of fmaily commitments), possibly will be squeezed further by the 'bedroom tax', the real terms cut in other benefits, losing out if they work in the public sector due to the Govt's draconian pay freezes of the last three year, losing out through cuts to publicly provided services such as libraries, sports facilities, Sure Start centres etc. All-in-all if you're poor – whether working or not – the achievements of the Govt are someone hard to appreciate. However, if your're already well-off (45% top rate of tax etc.) or a tax-avoiding business, things are just great…….
Paul Simon If you're going to judge the overall impact of taxes or policies, when you're talking about richer people why have you mentioned just the top rate of tax, and not all the changes that have increased the amount of tax such people pay (such as the changes in to capital gains tax, the changes to pension tax breaks, the restrictions on claiming tax relief and so on)?
Ah, pensions. Public sector pension 'reform' has – through the wheeze of calculating uprating based on RPI to CPI – and on the move from final salary to career average – ensured more workers will pay more and retire on less. Overall though, how would you evaluate the achievements of the LDs in addressing wealth inequality (which is in essence what our debate is about) as well as economic and social mobility (the future potential for individuals, groups and classes to narrow existing wealth inequality)?
Mike Thornton is an impressive candidate and the Lib Dem support for him seems immense.