The next Great Reform Act? Pull the other one, Nick.

"...for someone who says he has embraced a new way of doing politics Clegg’s grand rhetoric bears all the hallmarks of the spin and over-selling which the previous Labour administration was said to be guilty of..."

Nick Clegg has called the new government’s measures to reform politics ‘the most significant programme of empowerment by a British government since the great reforms of the 19th Century’, indeed since the Great Reform Act of 1832.

The new Baldwin?

"I for one think that the past is as much of a guide to the future as our current neophilia. On that basis, LibDems beware!"

Few Liberal Democrats have put their coalition with the Conservatives into historical perspective. This is partly due to all politicians’ intoxication with the supposed novelty of any situation these days, something they share with most of their fellow citizens. How many times did Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg assert their embrace of a ‘new politics’?

What’s 5% between friends?

One of the most striking statements of the last few days was William Hague’s claim that ‘the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May, 2015’. That is, by the way, 7 May. One for the diary, maybe? And it’s all because of this clause in the coalition agreement:

The parties agree to the establishment of five year fixed-term parliaments. A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government will put a binding motion before the House of Commons in the first days following this agreement stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015. Following this motion, legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.

This has provoked a series of complaints, about being its supposedly undemocratic nature. It would, for example, stop a government defeated by one vote on a vote of confidence, as Callaghan was in 1979, from having to go to the country.

Although it’s not very clear from the coalition agreement, what the scheme is doing is decoupling two concepts: ‘confidence’ and ‘dissolution’. So a government that lost a vote of confidence (like Callaghan’s) would still be expected to resign. But, unlike at present, that would not trigger an (almost) automatic general election. Instead an alternative governing majority would be sought, perhaps under a new Prime Minister, perhaps under a new arrangement of parties. If no alternative could be found, then parties would come together to trigger the 55% dissolution requirement and an election would be held.

One problem that many of those arguing against this have is that fixed term parliaments were a manifesto pledge for both Labour and the Liberal Democrats (though not the Conservatives). And here’s the problem: if you have fixed term parliaments, then you need a mechanism of some sort that prevents the governing party ending them at will. Else, how do you simply stop the government deliberately losing a vote of confidence, and triggering an election, whenever it likes? A fixed term parliament, without some mechanism to stop that sort of manoeuvring, isn’t fixed at all.

But even if you accept that the ideas are worth considering, there are still all sorts of interesting questions:

1. Why 5 years? Most recent UK Parliaments have lasted for four years. Moreover, Scottish, Welsh and London elections are on a four-year cycles, establishing Westminster on a four-year cycle as well – and starting now - would also ensure that they didn’t occur on the same days.

2. Why 55%? If the aim is to stop a party collapsing its own government, then 55% seems very low. Whilst it would work in this particular parliament, in most recent elections (including 1983, 1987, 1997, and 2001) the government would have had enough MPs to trigger the 55% hurdle on their own. The Scottish Parliament, which has a similar scheme, has a 66% hurdle, and that would be more significant.

3. How is this to be embedded? It is not clear what this ‘binding’ resolution is. Westminster doesn’t have binding resolutions, or laws. What is to stop a government – with a majority, but not 55% - simply repealing the bill establishing fixed parliaments, and then triggering an election? It might look a bit shifty, but it could always be justified in the ‘good of the country’ or something similar.

4. Did anyone consult the Queen about this, since formally dissolution is in the hands of the Monarch?

5. And what effect will this have on party discipline? Before, governments always had recourse to making an issue a vote of confidence, which would make all but the most recalcitrant MPs come back into line, for fear of triggering an election. Under the proposed scheme, losing a vote of confidence might bring down the administration, but as long as it could muster 55% it wouldn’t need to go to the country.

These are interesting times to be studying the constitution; they might also be interesting times to be studying party discipline.


Professor Philip Cowley

ConDemnation?

"But what was it that Karl Marx said about History repeating itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce?"

Amidst all the speculation regarding negotiations about the creation of a post-election arrangement between the Conservatives and LibDems I haven’t seen any reference to the last time the Liberals (as they were then) put in a minority government.

Actually, they did this twice in the 1920s, first in 1923 and then in 1929. Neither time will give Nick Clegg much comfort.

After the 1923 election Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin resigned as his Conservative government had lost its majority, although with 258 seats (and 38.5 per cent of votes) his remained the largest party in the Commons. After some hand wringing Henry Asquith decided that his 158 Liberal MPs should allow Ramsay MacDonald to hold office, the two parties sharing a common position on free trade. They supported Labour on a supply and confidence basis. The MacDonald government however lasted just ten months, after losing a vote of confidence, having achieved very little of substance.

The resulting 1924 election saw Baldwin return to power with a working majority. The Liberals, having angered many of its supporters for enabling Labour to hold power for the first time, lost 118 seats and its share of the vote collapsed from 29.7 per cent (and virtual parity with Labour) to 17.8 per cent. They would never again enjoy such a strong position as that held in 1923.

After five years as Prime Minister Baldwin lost the 1929 election. This time Labour had become the largest party in the Commons but at 287 seats MacDonald was still short of a majority. The Liberals, by now led by David Lloyd George, had 59 MPs (albeit elected by 23.6 per cent of voters) and again allowed Labour to take power. This time, however, there were some strings attached – specifically a royal commission on electoral reform. Unfortunately for the Liberals by the time Labour left office in 1931, amidst a grave financial crisis, it had failed to pass any legislation.

Of course, just because this earlier Liberal experience of supporting minority governments was so miserable does not necessarily mean it will be in the future. But what was it that Karl Marx said about History repeating itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce?

Professor Steven Fielding

Election of losers

This has been an election of losers. David Cameron failed to seal the deal and Gordon Brown has seen Labour lose over 90 seats. The biggest losers however are the LibDems. Yet while the high hopes of Cleggmania have taken a very hard knock, they still have a chance to clutch victory from defeat.


During the campaign Clegg made some very unwise pronouncements – about not dealing with Gordon Brown and how the party that won the most Commons seats and most votes should be given the chance to govern. The logic of what Clegg said means that the LibDems now have apparently no option but to rebuff any overtures from Labour and support the Conservatives who will not deal with Gordon Brown. Maybe Clegg will decide his personal credibility rests on living up to his words. Maybe his fellow MPs will decide otherwise when they meet on Saturday.

For – poorly though they performed on May 6th – the LibDems have a once-in-a-generation chance to get electoral reform – and the only party offering that at the moment is Gordon Brown’s Labour party. As projections stand Labour and the LibDems together still fall short of a Commons majority – but one wonders how the SNP and Plaid look upon a return of the Conservatives to power.

The Daily Mail and the Sun will all scream that Cameron has won. He hasn’t. No-one won the 2010 election. But do the LibDems have the political fortitude to ensure they win the post-election campaign? It will be an interesting meeting on Saturday.

Professor Steven Fielding

Why is no one criticising Nick Clegg’s Vietnam War record?

"The Daily Mail trumpeted the Conservatives’ success in raising £1.5 million in the first week of the campaign, but Obama could raise that between sneezing and blowing his nose..."

For those of us who treat elections as a spectator sport, the general election campaign is bubbling up nicely. But for a politics-as-sports fan like me, it lacks something in comparison with presidential campaigns in the United States. Sure, we’ve got our own ‘Yes we can’ (albeit ‘probably not’) dynamic going on. And the debates have been fun. But unlike the US, we don’t get to enjoy candidates’ paid-for advertising campaigns.
In particular, we’re missing out on juicy attack ads—30 seconds of dramatic narration enumerating an opponent’s real, implied and imagined transgressions, character flaws, voting record etc.

There are Party Election Broadcasts of course, but PEBs don’t give the same thrill as the 30 second spot. In the heat of battle where is David Cameron’s soft-on-crime Willie Horton? Where is the shady support group ready to step up and challenge Nick Clegg’s Vietnam War record?

Consider too, the people who are rendered redundant by the absence of paid ads in our election culture: the undergraduates, pensioners and other would-be focus group types; the political scientists and grad students with papers to write; the ad-watch and fact-check bloggers. Think of the atrophying creativity of our best advertising people.

And spare a thought for the wasted youth of our frustrated YouTube parody-makers. How do you parody a PEB?

What would this general election campaign look like if candidates ran paid ads? With other 4000 candidates, if every single one ran ad campaigns on TV it would be chaotic and unbearably parochial, but at the party level, with three competitive candidates, a trailing incumbent and two parties emphasizing a break with the current administration but also less likely to form a coalition with each other, conditions are ripe for a fantastically negative campaign.

And given the brevity of the UK campaign, the concentration of attacks would be spectacular. It is interesting to imagine what British campaign ads would look like. Would we see Daisy girl reinvented to remind us of the dangers of European integration? Would Gordon Brown emphasize his superiority over Nick Clegg in taking care of business at 3am? Or would ads be more inimitably British? Picture Gordon Brown as Stevens from Remains of the Day—surely a creative advertising type could take that idea and run with it?



More importantly, would campaign ads be good for the UK? And especially, would it make more people vote? Negative campaigning gets a bad press, but recent research in the US suggests that exposure to attack ads can sometimes mobilize voters to turn out and is often a source of substantive and documented information.

Negative messages stimulate stronger affective responses, are more memorable and signal to people that something important is at stake. They also help voters to differentiate between candidates—an important issue for less sophisticated citizens who say the candidates are all the same and therefore don’t vote.

In many ways the information environment available to voters during UK campaigns is very good. However, there is one area where politics is yet to fully penetrate: the commercial break. This is a niche that campaign ads were literally born to fill and might be able to reach less politically engaged voters who, even now, may be surprised to learn that there is an election coming up.

Rather than confining politicians to the news and shopping centres, why not unleash them on people waiting for Desperate Housewives or Masterchef to come back on? Since we can now access our preferred entertainment so efficiently, people who choose to avoid information about the election can do so with little effort. Running ads on Dave or E4 might just get more fans of Friends repeats informed and engaged in the electoral process.

It wouldn’t be cheap. Airtime at commercial rates isn’t cheap. At 2008 prices, a 30 second spot run nationally on ITV during Coronation Street would cost £75K. With the Electoral Commission’s limit of £20 million on campaign spending this is probably not a cost effective use of resources, especially given that there is no systematic evidence that negative advertising actually works electorally: small dents in an opponent’s support are offset by diminution of support for the sponsor of an attack.

Yet this doesn’t deter candidates and parties around the world, who continue to run negative ads in hope of striking it lucky. Lyndon Johnson’s Daisy Girl, the most famous and perhaps successful ad of all time, ran just once, albeit in the pre-multi-channel, pre-internet era when audiences were effectively captive.

Reaching audiences in our current fractured media environment is expensive and difficult—which is why we see such enthusiasm for experimentation with internet communication tools. Cost effectiveness is clearly an issue for parties in the UK, where raising campaign funds is more difficult than in the States: The Daily Mail trumpeted the Conservatives’ success in raising £1.5 million in the first week of the campaign, but Obama could raise that between sneezing and blowing his nose.

Dr Jon Sullivan

Mr Clegg Goes to Washington

"This ignorance was, it turns out, Clegg’s greatest weapon..."

When most people turned on their televisions to watch the first leaders’ debate they probably knew – or thought they knew - all they wanted to know about Gordon Brown and David Cameron. For good or bad their images had already been firmly fixed in their minds.

Of Nick Clegg however many were blissfully ignorant. This ignorance was, it turns out, Clegg’s greatest weapon. For when the viewers saw this seemingly nice young man with the striking yellow tie talk direct to camera and distance himself from the two ‘old parties’ and offer them a ‘new politics’ they had no reason to disbelieve him.

If only because they had had not been paying much attention to politics, so far as many voters were concerned, Clegg had no past, he was new: if not The Man With No Name, he was The Man With No Image.

Pity, if you will, the other two. For to be leader of either the Labour or Conservative parties is to be – no matter how hard your spin doctors work – a man mistrusted. One index of quite how bad are their images is their representation in fiction.

As I argued in the Guardian recently Tony Blair has an awful set of fictional representations. You might think that he deserved them. But these do not all originate from reactions to the invasion of Iraq. In fact, soon as ‘Tony Blair’ set foot on the stage, page or screen – even before 1997 - he was cast as media-obsessed, spin-centric and disingenuous. This might have said something about the real Blair – but it also said something about how writers represent those who seek and hold political power.

The Deal, Peter Morgan’s 2002 play for Channel Four, imagined the Brown-Blair relationship and speculated about how it was that the latter lost out to the former in 1994. In 2002 Gordon Brown was the hero – if Blair was superficial, Brown was substantial; if Blair was the blow-in to Labour, Brown was rooted, soaked in the party’s ethos; if Blair was disloyal it was Brown’s loyalty to John Smith that cost him the leadership. But look at Brown as depicted in The Trial of Tony Blair and Confessions of a Diary Secretary both of which were broadcast in 2007: childish, petty and sulky.

Right from the start Cameron too has got the sharp end of the stick. In Confessions of a Diary Secretary he is presented as a silly ass suffering some severe problems with his cycling shorts. In the 2009 documentary-with-made-up-bits When Boris Met Dave things are even worse: as a student he shown liking Sade.

Where is Nick Clegg? Nowhere to be seen. When politics is screened the LibDems as a whole hardly get a look-in.

The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, broadcast on BBC1 in 2006, reduced the 2005 election campaign to two middle aged Labour and Conservative candidates fighting in a supermarket car park. The LibDem turns up just as the police arrive.



As it happens he is also given a flea in his ear by our heroine but then this series was about Pritchard, who wins the election after creating a party of similarly politically disenchanted women. In 2010, Nick Clegg is our Mrs Pritchard – or more likely our Mr Smith Goes to Washington.

Frank Capra’s film might have been released in 1939 but it reverberates through not just US but also UK politics. Showing how an idealistic young man untouched by politics (for which read corruption and selfish ambition) cuts through the party games to actually stand up for the interests of the people, it is the model for any number of later screen fictions about politics.

Mr Smith has also been consciously or unconsciously evoked by plenty of politicians – both Obama and McCain did it in 2008 - keen to present themselves as the ‘outsider’ candidate. It is an image which in these disenchanted times can be pretty potent.

For Clegg the danger is that this is a one-off – how can you preserve your image as the outsider when the whole purpose of your being is to get inside? 

Professor Steven Fielding

The Harrods Deterrent

"Perhaps a nuclear deterrent from Homebase would be more fitting than a future one from Harrods?"

In Yes Prime Minister, Sir Humphrey Appleby reassures the Prime Minister that Trident is the sort of nuclear weapons system that Harrods would sell. This was a good analogy at the time, relevant to the follow-on system that the Blair government announced in 2006.

Trident D5 was designed for a superpower, guaranteeing the ability to evade enemy defences and offering such a degree of accuracy that it could be employed against the hardened military (that is, even nuclear) targets of an adversary. The successor submarines to the Vanguard class will have to come into service in the 2020s and will ensure interoperability with the American ballistic missile system long into the future.



Yet the Liberal Democrats have questioned the cosy consensus between the two main parties over proceeding with a ‘son of Trident’. Twice in the first televised debate between the party leaders, Nick Clegg poured scorn on plans to purchase a future nuclear weapons system of the ‘Cold War age’, at enormous cost.

In doing so, he is tapping into a vein of thinking that goes back to the time of Dr David Owen and the Social Democrat Party that questioned whether the UK needed such a highly capable nuclear system. At that time it advocated a deterrent in which nuclear-armed cruise missiles were fitted to some of the Royal Navy’s hunter-killer submarines.

Such an option could be pursued now. It would retain a nuclear capability in the face of an uncertain, proliferating world but would place it on a much more modest level. A cruise missile has undeniable drawbacks over its ballistic missile equivalent: it is more vulnerable to enemy counter-measures, it is of shorter range, it can carry only a single warhead and it impinges on the conventional role of submarines.

Nevertheless, it offers the prospect of remaining in the nuclear club with a submarine-based platform at a much reduced cost.

The Liberal Democrats are right to re-open a debate that was too swiftly closed down by the Blair government. With massive cuts in public spending in prospect and a black hole acknowledged within the defence budget, it is timely to put all issues up for debate. Both the Labour government and the Conservatives have said that the future of the strategic nuclear deterrent would be off-limits in the Strategic Defence Review that will follow the General Election.

But with the pressures of the war in Afghanistan and in an international environment in which the US and Russia have announced major cuts in their strategic arsenals, it is time to re-evaluate UK policy.

Perhaps a nuclear deterrent from Homebase would be more fitting than a future one from Harrods?

Professor Wyn Rees

Polls stability again (well, sort of)

Again, the polls appear to be all over the place. Last night’s ComRes poll had the Conservatives in front by nine points, Populus by just one. You Gov had the Lib Dems ahead by three, Angus Reid had them ahead by just one. Lib Dem support had either ‘burst’ (ComRes had them back to 26%, albeit a level of support that many Lib Dems would have sold their souls for just a week ago) or was at its highest level (34%, with YouGov).

There’s no doubt that there’s some fluctuations. But, as with the pre-debate polls, there’s also some real continuity, once you take into account the margin of error you get from sampling.

The Conservative vote is the most stable of all. Since the Lib Dem surge, every poll has put the Conservatives on 33+/-2.

With one exception – yesterday’s Angus Reid poll – every poll has put Labour on 27+/-3.

And with two exceptions – yesterday’s ComRes and YouGov polls – poll survey has put the Lib Dems on 30+/-3.

And remember that each polling company conducts their surveys differently – different ways of doing fieldwork, and then (even more importantly) different ways of weighting and filtering the data – and so we should expect to see variation between companies.

If however we look at the spreads by companies, then we see even more stability. Excluding those organisations which have only done one poll since the Lib Dem surge:

ComRes have: Con: 33+/-2; Lab: 27+/-1; LD: 28+/-2.

YouGov have: Con: 32+/-1; Lab: 28+/-2; LD: 32+/-3.

Angus Reid have: Con: 32+/-0; Lab: 24+/-1; LD: 33+/-1.

ICM have: Con: 34+/-1; Lab: 20+/-1; LD: 29+/-2.

In other words, within polling companies, not a single poll has seen movement outside the margin of error, and the Conservative and Labour spreads are even more stable, the majority being just +/-1.

One other thing. The +/-3 margin of error is 95% accurate, but that means that one in every 20 polls will show variations beyond it. The phrase rogue polls is used wildly – as Mike Smithson of politicalbetting.com often says “a rogue poll is one whose results you disagree with” – but it technically refers just to those 5% of polls.

We are now seeing so many polls – 16 since the debates alone – that we should expect about one poll every five or six days to be a rogue.

UPDATE: This piece was written before the publication of today's Ipsos-MORI poll, but that merely confirms the argument above, with the poll nestling nicely near the mid-points, at 32/28/32.


Professor Philip Cowley

Leaders debates - lessons from Romania

"...finding a balance between using kid gloves and attacking your opponent is very difficult..."

Nearly all the pre-debate coverage last week tried to draw lessons from the US experience of presidential elections. But it’s not just the US that has them. Romania has had televised presidential debates since 1994, just four years after the revolution.

And to Romanian eyes, the British debates featured the typical British politeness of the candidates who barely engaged in any juicy attacks or cynical remarks, an audience so overwhelmed that the individuals asking questions had trembling voices when reading them from a piece of paper, the studio so grey it might remind one of the ’60s quiz games on black-and-white TV sets.

The most recent Romanian Presidential TV debate took place less than six months ago, on 4 December 2009, just two days before the vote, with 4 million people watching, out of a population of 22 million. And if there is anything to learn from it, it is that finding a balance between using kid gloves and attacking your opponent is very difficult.



Mircea Geoana, the leader of the Socialist opposition party, was leading in the polls for the whole period before the election. Moreover, footage had just been released on the incumbent Traian Basescu hitting a 10-year-old boy in the face at a presidential rally. Mr Basescu's campaign said the 18-second video that showed the president striking the boy was a dirty trick and the footage was "seriously altered", but by the night of the confrontation it had been shown dozens of times on television news channels, seen thousands of times online, debated incessantly, and become a major topic of everyday TV studio/ street conversation.

By assuming it had been vulgarized enough in the four days before the debate and that his winning card was talking mainly policy agendas and manifestoes, Mr. Geoana ignored the elephant in the room entirely. It was Mr. Basescu, who had all to lose in his bid for a second mandate, and with the leading two Romanian News TV channels against him, who brought it up. He found the balance between stressing the achievements of his administration, and accusing his opponent of protecting former “Securitatea” (Romanian Secret Police) and of running a dishonest campaign (with reference to the ‘fake’ video).

Basescu went on to win.

Oana Elisabeta Pop

Multiple polling days

"Postal votes will be landing on doormats soon.  They could well be doing so when the Lib Dems are enjoying their best election campaign ever..." 

A couple of months ago, I was chatting to a party strategist, and asked what he thought had done most to change the nature of British elections in recent years. His answer: postal voting.


Or more accurately, the increased amount of it, following the Representation of the People Act 2000, which allowed for postal voting on demand.  Since then, the amount of postal voting has increased election-on-election, to the point where around 15% of the votes cast in 2005 were postal votes.

A paper published in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations (sub required, unfortunately) by Rallings et al argues that, for all the hooha, postal voting had relatively little impact on either turnout or party support at the last election.

But the reason that the strategist argued postal voting altered British elections was because they changed the focus and the structure, even if not necessarily the outcome.

Prior to the 2000 Act, everything the parties did built towards polling day.  Whilst most things still build towards polling day, parties now also need to be aware of the significant chunk of voters who will be casting their votes before then.  Widespread postal voting effectively creates multiple polling dates.

Postal votes will be landing on doormats soon.  They could well be doing so when the Lib Dems are enjoying their best election campaign ever.  Even if the Lib Dem surge subsides and Labour manages to pull back some of its support by the traditional polling day, a good chunk of voters will have cast their votes at the point when Labour were in third place.

UPDATE: Writing it, I thought 'I can't believe I'm the only person to think about this'.  And then I saw this from the excellent UK Polling Report, which proved that I wasn't.  Great minds, etc.

Professor Philip Cowley

Shorter, fairer, more polluted? The Lib Dem manifeso compared

"At worst, the government has provided too much and voters will actively want less. Either way, other parties can make gains..."

Following on from the previous comparison of the Conservative and Labour manifestos, what about the Liberal Democrat manifesto?

The first thing to note is the comparative difference in size. Whilst the Conservative manifesto was nearly 29,000 words long, and Labour’s over 30,000 words, the Lib Dems come in at a relatively svelte 21,668 words.

Another striking difference is the massive disparity in the number of times the word ‘fair’ (or ‘fairness’, ‘fairer’, ‘fairest’) was mentioned in the manifestos. In the Lib Dem manifesto this was mentioned 99 times, compared to 64 for the Labour manifesto, and just 12 for the Conservative manifesto.

Given that the Lib Dem manifesto was nearly a third shorter than the Conservative manifesto, this makes the difference even starker.

In their manifesto, the Conservatives used the word polluting only once, whilst the Lib Dems mentioned pollution 14 times. This suggests a qualitatively difference in each parties’ perception of environmental issues. It may be the case that this is a result of the Conservatives making aspirational (perhaps utopian) appeals about the environment, whilst the Lib Dems are focusing upon an existing problem that needs to be managed.

Labour made no references at all to pollution. This may be a result of their focus upon a ‘green recovery’ (largely in economic terms) rather than a more dedicated ‘environmentalism’.

More generally, the Lib Dems were far less likely to use imagery relating to ascending (‘rise’, ‘rising’, etc.; 110% less uses) or height (‘higher’, ‘grow’, etc.; 54% less uses) than Labour. In this respect, the Lib Dems were similar to the Conservatives, between who there were no significant differences.

This is consistent with a relatively less positive vision of the UK in measurable areas (notably the economy) of both past performance and future prospects.

Again similarly to the Conservatives, the Lib Dems are less likely to use words relating to time (‘past’, ‘decade’, ‘time’, etc.) than Labour (34% less uses). Also similarly to the Conservatives, the Lib Dems are more likely to invoke ‘abstract thought’ imagery (‘belief’, ‘choice’, ‘plan’, etc.) than Labour (37% more uses).

This is probably a result of Labour attempting to play upon their past reputation for governing, whilst the Lib Dems (who have no recent governing experience) attempt to suggest alternate prospects.

Interestingly, this is a dangerous strategy for Labour. Recent scholarly work has shown that voters can have a ‘thermostatic’ perception of issues (discussed in more detail here). They vote for a party because the party offers them something that they want; once that want has been met other wants and needs come to the fore.

At best, the government has successfully given people what they wanted and they have ceased to want more. Playing on this in an election risks isolating voters by reminding them that you are no longer offering to fulfil new ‘wants’.

At worst, the government has provided too much and voters will actively want less. Either way, other parties can make gains. Attempting to trade on past performance – by looking back at the wants you have met in the past – may bring less reward than some in the party might hope.

All differences noted are significant at the 95% level, unless explicitly stated, and all percentage comparisons are corrected for relative differences in size. Absolute word usage numbers are uncorrected.

Jonathan Rose

Life’s not fair, son

"Would the Lib Dems prop up a government that had come third in the popular vote? Now, there’s a question many of us didn’t think we’d be asking when this campaign began..."

Three things have changed as a result of the Lib Dems poll surge following Thursday’s debate. Two are (fairly) obvious, the third less so.

Starting with the most obvious: the Lib Dem vote has increased dramatically. Today’s YouGov poll for the Sun puts them on 33. The last YouGov poll before the debate had them on 22. In other words, the party has increased its support by 50% in the space of just four days.

Today’s poll puts them in the lead, as did a bpix poll on Sunday. We’ve seen third party surges before, but not this close to a general election. No one knows whether the Lib Dems will manage to sustain this level of support, or whether it will fade (or even increase yet further). Anyone who does tell you they know is fibbing, for we are in unchartered waters here.

Second, and as a result, both the other two parties have lost support. Prior to the debates, every opinion poll during the campaign put the Conservatives on 38+/-3, every poll put Labour on 30+/-3. That is no longer true. The Conservatives have been on 31 in two of the post-debate polls. Labour have dropped as low as 26. The two-party share of the vote in today’s poll – in what used to be seen as the archetypical two-party system – is just 58%.

The third consequence is the least obvious. When I was growing up, and used to complain that something wasn’t fair, my Dad would reply: life’s not fair, son. That applies in spade to the British electoral system. Projections of seats from votes should always be treated with caution – especially now – but most projections of seats based on recent polls would put Labour third in votes but first in seats. And the Lib Dems, first in votes, would come third in seats.

Prior to the debates, whilst most polls pointed to a hung parliament it was one in which the Conservatives would most likely have emerged with most seats. No longer. On most projections from the post-debate polls (and the precise details differ depending how you make that projection), we will have a hung parliament but with Labour as the largest party in terms of seats. And that is the real game changer from Thursday.

If they can push on, and increase support, then the Lib Dems might break through this barrier, and begin to be properly rewarded in seats. But they need around 37/38% to become the largest single party, and around the 40% mark to form a majority. And short of that, the Lib Dem surge hurts the Conservatives more than it hurts Labour.

This does, however, pose a problem for Nick Clegg. The Lib Dem position is that, in the event of a hung parliament, they are prepared to reach agreement with whichever party has the most obvious ‘mandate’ from the voters.

Nick Clegg, has, however always been very careful not to specify whether mandate means votes or seats, arguing that this is a hypothetical discussion, the sort of thing that nerdy academics worry about but which didn’t worry normal folk much.

In fact, it has always been a real possibility that Labour might emerge with more seats but with fewer votes. And on today’s poll is looks even less hypothetical.

Would the Lib Dems prop up a government that had come third in the popular vote? Now, there’s a question many of us didn’t think we’d be asking when this campaign began.

Professor Philip Cowley

Clegg is Cripps not Churchill shock

"Nick Clegg will have to show that he is more than that if he really is going to rival Churchill...."

The Sunday Times quotes a YouGov poll that says Nick Clegg is nearly as popular as Winston Churchill.

Wonderful stuff for those responsible for the story, the justification for which is that in 1945 Churchill had an approval rating of 83% while Clegg’s is currently 72%. The only sting in this particular tale – for Clegg anyway - is that Churchill went on to lose the general election - rather badly I seem to recall - a few months later.

Actually the best historical figure with whom to compare Clegg is not Churchill but Sir Stafford Cripps. Stafford Who you may ask? Those with some history behind them might know that he was Clement Attlee’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man of severe moral rectitude, a teetotaller and vegetarian.

That however did not stop his Conservative opponents referring to this paragon as ‘Sir Stifford Crapps’ after a BBC radio announcer committed one of the funniest political spoonerisms, ever.

Crapps – sorry, Cripps – is less well known for something else. In 1942 he was nearly as popular as Churchill. I wrote about this a while ago but it is worth retelling the tale.

At the start of 1942 Britain was in trouble militarily and Churchill had his back against the wall. There was a popular mood that castigated all parties as to blame for the country’s troubles. Along comes Sir Stafford. Having been expelled from the Labour party before the war he was not attached to either of the two main ‘old’ (as Clegg might put it) parties.

Returning home in January after ending his stint as Ambassador to Moscow he gave a BBC radio speech. This struck a loud, clanging chord with a disenchanted British public – half of whom heard the speech and 93% of those approved of its message, which when boiled down was just an appeal for greater individual effort to win the war.

Almost as vacuous as Clegg’s contribution to the leadership debates, you might think. Even so, this one speech catapulted Cripps to the front rank of politics: at the peak of his popularity 34% of people wanted him to replace Churchill at Number 10.

So, what happened? I don’t recall Cripps becoming Prime Minister. Reality happened. Churchill brought him into government where he promptly got lost in administration while El Alamein helped restore faith in his government.

History teaches no lessons but it does show in this case that radio (and television) might create political stars who shoot across the firmament but they need more than that if they are to stay there. Cripps was merely a temporary repository for a public narked off with all politicians: Nick Clegg will have to show that he is more than that if he really is going to rival Churchill.

Professor Steven Fielding

Now that's what I call a poll

"Who said elections were dull?"

Until the debates, every opinion poll during the election had shown the Conservatives on 38+/-3, and Labour on 30+/-3. The YouGov poll published in the Sun today is the first to show movement beyond the sort of fluctuations you get from sampling error.

And how. It puts the Lib Dems in second place, with 30%, behind the Conservatives on 34%, with Labour now trailing in third (28%).

There are multiple reasons to be at least cautious about a) assuming that things will stay like this, or b) trying to work out what that means in terms of seats. These are explained very well at the superb UK Polling Report website.

But the one thing we can be certain of – it’s certainly livened things up. Who said elections were dull?

Professor Philip Cowley

Still not talking about immigration?

"...this may backfire by pushing at least some voters to the BNP and other small parties, as well as contributing to large-scale public resentment..."

In last night’s debate, the first question put to the three main party leaders was about immigration. Based on the responses, the differences between the parties on this issue are likely to be perceived as relatively marginal.

All three argued for controls on migration. Gordon Brown emphasised the recent controls that his government put in place based on a points system and pointed out that net migration had already been declining in the past couple of years. David Cameron claimed that immigration was still too high and needed to be reduced further and that his party would introduce an immigration cap, as well as reforming the border policing system. Thus, while his approach is more restrictive than Brown’s (Brown is opposed to an arbitrary cap), there is also no (or little) attempt to appeal to potential far-right voters in any of what he said.

Perhaps ironically, Nick Clegg’s policy – to allow migrants only to go to regions that need them economically – is an approach with the potential to be the most restrictive. Spain’s 1985 Foreigners’ Law, which introduced similar additional regional/provincial bureaucratic processes for legal entry into Spain to work, has been claimed to encourage illegal migration because the legal procedures were so onerous. It also potentially resembles old guest-worker policies in places like Germany, where labour migrants were tied to a particular job and were not allowed to work for other employers once they had been granted entry into Germany.

Despite this early discussion of immigration in the debate last night, it is clear that, as predicted, none of the three wished to make immigration a key issue. It was not mentioned in any of their opening or closing statements. Rather than ‘playing the immigration card’, Cameron in particular (but the other two leaders as well) focused on the technical details of immigration policy, with none arguing for an immediate halt to migration.

Yet immigration was the second most important issue after the economy mentioned by British citizens in the March Ipsos Mori poll. As argued previously, ignoring the issue like this may backfire by pushing at least some voters to the BNP and other small parties, as well as contributing to large-scale public resentment at a political class that seems unwilling to address one of the issues that has been of major concern to the British public in the past decade.

Dr Lauren McLaren

Avoid, Avoid, Avoid

New research into the political views of a group of women in the 24-35  age group on lower incomes - or the 'Lambrini Ladies' as we call them - has discovered many interesting and serious things (about which more later).

However one of the more amusing findings is that when asked if they would snog, marry or avoid the leaders of our three main political parties 89% wanted to avoid Gordon Brown, 66% would flee
David Cameron and 63% would give Nick Clegg a very wide berth.

As I will reveal later the Lambrini Ladies have more significant reasons for being disengaged from politics but if any of the leaders think they can exploit their sex appeal they had better think again.

Professor Steven Fielding