Political

UKIP continues to fail whilst succeeding

Back in May, I pointed out UKIP’s bizarre feat of managing to lose whilst winning:

On any conventional measure of elections, UKIP is the big winner from Thursday’s European Parliament elections. Votes up, seats up, the anti-EU cause on a roll right?

Well not quite. Votes and seats up, yes – but during the UKIP surge of the last few months there’s been another, quite contradictory surge.

From being regularly behind in Europe referendum polling, the ‘stay in’ vote is now consistently ahead of the ‘come out’ vote. Just as UKIP has risen in popularity, its preferred choice in an EU referendum has fallen in popularity.

That increased support for an ‘in’ vote in a European referendum has continued in the intervening months with a few fluctuations along the way.

Then there’s also this:

Economist table of UKIP polling

As UKIP’s support has gone up, the ceiling on its support has come down, just as support for leaving Europe has also fallen.

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