How enthusiastic are you about voting?
Wednesday, March 11, 2009I ask, as Politics Home has come up with a new slant on political polling by asking how enthusiastic or otherwise Tory, Labour or Lib Dem voters are about voting for their preferred parties.
Tories have the highest percentage of 'very enthusiastic' would be voters at 47%, while the other two rate 34% and 24% respectively. Combining very and vanilla 'enthusiastic' gives 75% to the Tories, 65% for Labour and 66% for the Lib Dems. So not quite so stark a division between the three, and what folk say may not indicate what they feel. Perhaps LDs are more reticent.
Anyway, offered the choice of being 'actively depressed but I cannot see a better option' sees figures of C 5, L 5 and LD 11.
The PH pundit sees the totality of these findings as indicative of a hard Tory vote and a comparatively soft LD vote, but I read it otherwise. Firstly, if I was a Tory voter in Merthyr Tydfil or a Socialist in Mole Valley, I would have absolutely no expectation of my party winning in my lifetime, and I would argue that it is the expectation of the result rather than the act of voting that depresses. Similarly, LDs are well aware that the best that they can hope for overall for is a hung parliament, and that looks unlikely at present, quite apart the hundreds of seats where they are a sideshow to the two big beasts.
There can be precious few folk who hand on heart could claim that they support every last thing in a manifesto, and the depressed voters probably also encompass europhile / hanger and flogger / EU rejectionist Tories, deep Blairite and Clause IV Socialists and more free market inclined LDs. Doubtless if PR ever came in the three leading parties would find their internal contradictions and tensions would tear them apart.
Tories have the highest percentage of 'very enthusiastic' would be voters at 47%, while the other two rate 34% and 24% respectively. Combining very and vanilla 'enthusiastic' gives 75% to the Tories, 65% for Labour and 66% for the Lib Dems. So not quite so stark a division between the three, and what folk say may not indicate what they feel. Perhaps LDs are more reticent.
Anyway, offered the choice of being 'actively depressed but I cannot see a better option' sees figures of C 5, L 5 and LD 11.
The PH pundit sees the totality of these findings as indicative of a hard Tory vote and a comparatively soft LD vote, but I read it otherwise. Firstly, if I was a Tory voter in Merthyr Tydfil or a Socialist in Mole Valley, I would have absolutely no expectation of my party winning in my lifetime, and I would argue that it is the expectation of the result rather than the act of voting that depresses. Similarly, LDs are well aware that the best that they can hope for overall for is a hung parliament, and that looks unlikely at present, quite apart the hundreds of seats where they are a sideshow to the two big beasts.
There can be precious few folk who hand on heart could claim that they support every last thing in a manifesto, and the depressed voters probably also encompass europhile / hanger and flogger / EU rejectionist Tories, deep Blairite and Clause IV Socialists and more free market inclined LDs. Doubtless if PR ever came in the three leading parties would find their internal contradictions and tensions would tear them apart.
Labels: Elections, opinion polls
