Who is getting on the Green party bus?
Are the LDs most vulnerable?
There is a widespread assumption that the party most likely to suffer if the Greens increase their general election vote share will be the Lib Dems. The latest ComRes poll had them on a chunky 6%.
On the face of it they seem to be targeting the same groups but is it actually the case that Nick Clegg’s party has most to fear?
This is the second part of some analysis I’ve been doing on the rise of “others†– UKIP, the BNP and the Greens – and the impact that they might have at the next general election.
By looking at what’s available from published polling data I’ve been trying to do break-downs on what current supporters of the smaller parties said that they did last time.
The following numbers are based on the aggregation of all the relevant data from the only pollster that makes its data available in a way that enables you to do this analysis for the “minors” – ComRes.
Since the firm changed its methodology at the end of June a total of eight separate voting intention surveys have been published and I have taken all the numbers from these. This is the outcome for Green party supporters:
What did intending Green voters do at the 2005 general election?:-
4.3% said CON
20.1% said LAB
14.9% said LD
24.2% said “another party” (I assume Green)
The rest did not remember or did not vote.
So again, like with the earlier UKIP analysis, this has produced something of a surprise. Barely one in six of intending Green voters supported the Lib Dems at the last election while about one in five voted Labour voters.
One thing that’s quite difficult with the Greens is knowing how many seats they will be contesting. Are they going for a full slate or will it be like 2005 when they only had 203 candidates in the field who chalked up just 283,000 votes (1% of the UK total) between them?
This is a hard one for pollsters because inevitably the Greens will be over-stated if they are contesting such a small proportion of seats. Many of the 6% in the ComRes poll will simply be unable to exercise that option. The firms need to find a way of dealing with this?