Lord Ashcroft's big bucket of cold water to douse Tory optimism

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/05/lord-ashcroft-poll-dowses-tories-optimism

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In the biographical blurb that is issued with his opinion polls, Michael Ashcroft describes himself as "an international businessman, author and philanthropist". To be strictly accurate, he should add "and tormentor of David Cameron".

The Conservative peer and former deputy chairman of the party has hit upon a highly effective means of generating publicity, intervening in the arguments about the direction of the Tories and stirring trouble for the prime minister. He does so by commissioning mega opinion polls: his latest has a sample of more than 8,000. This is a pricey undertaking for most people but loose change to a billionaire. Then he times the release of his polling results with a keen sense of when they will have most impact and frames them in an interesting and attention-drawing way.

His latest mega poll was published last night and the attention it is likely to attract will disrupt Mr Cameron's hopes of starting the new year on the front foot with a flurry of interviews, regional touring and policy unveiling. Of his depressing results for the Tories, Lord Ashcroft will no doubt say that he is only trying to assist his party by telling it the truth about what it needs to do to win. He will also know which aspect of it is most likely to be seized upon, both by the media and Tory MPs. The headline conclusion is that it remains extremely hard to see a path to an outright Conservative victory at the next general election. Or, as the Tory peer puts it: "An overall Conservative majority looks as elusive as it has throughout the parliament. To win one, the polling here shows, the Tories need to win the votes of everyone who supported them last time, plus everyone who is even prepared to think about doing so next time. Unfortunately, a lot of people in the first group are not currently in the second."

You could shrug – this is what Number 10 would like Tories to do – and say this ought not to be news because it is merely confirming something that anyone with a passing interest in politics had already worked out. As I mention from time to time, no Conservative prime minister has increased his party's share of the vote at a general election since Sir Anthony Eden's victory in 1955. And he did so in circumstances that were dramatically different from those that prevail today. Sir Anthony called a snap election almost immediately after he had succeeded Winston Churchill at Number 10. Britain was beginning to enjoy the fruits of the postwar consumer boom. The Labour party was badly and visibly divided, the number of Liberal MPs was tiny and there was no Ukip around in the 1950s to split the vote on the right.

It is true that history offers similarly dismaying warnings to Labour about its prospects. Here are two that are much repeated by Tories. No leader of the opposition has had such low personal ratings as Ed Miliband and gone on to become prime minister. Every opposition party that has won an election has topped 50% in the polls at some time over the course of the preceding parliament and Labour hasn't come close. These are anxiety-inducing precedents for Labour, but it is the Tories we are talking about today.

I expect the Ashcroft poll to cause some waves partly because it confounds Conservative assumptions. A lot of Tories had begun the new year in a more positive frame of mind about the state of play. They have been growing in confidence that a combination of economic recovery and Labour's weaknesses would put them on a trajectory to victory in 17 months' time. Lord Ashcroft chucks a big bucket of chilly water over that Tory optimism. This is especially so because he breaks down the results in a way that neatly explains why it is such a challenge for the Tories to create a winning coalition of voters.

The Tory peer segments what he calls "the Conservative Universe" into four groups. There are those he labels the Loyalists, people who voted Tory in 2010 and would do so again in an election tomorrow. There are the Joiners, people who did not vote Tory last time but say they probably will do next time. There are the Defectors, people who voted Tory last time but say they will not do so next time. Finally, there is a group called the Considerers. These are people who didn't vote Tory last time and wouldn't do so tomorrow, but might be lured over by David Cameron because they don't rule out supporting the Conservatives in the future.

The contrasting sizes of these groups tells its own story. By far the biggest of them – just over a third at 37% – are the Defectors. Those who have deserted the Conservatives since the last election are considerably more numerous than those who have stuck with or been attracted by the party. The number of Joiners is 6%. The Considerers are smaller still at just 3%. In short, the numbers moving into the Tory column don't come near to compensating for those leaving it. As Lord Ashcroft correctly concludes, to have any hope of winning a parliamentary majority, the Tories must keep all the Loyalists and Joiners, convince all the Considerers and win back all of the many Defectors.

David Cameron's people do not like this message at all. Since they got wind of it, they have been deploying two lines of argument to diss the Ashcroft poll. One is to scoff that it states the bleeding obvious. A senior adviser to the prime minister says: "There is a wearying predictability about the spin being put on this poll. It is self-evident that we've got to win more votes than last time. That is not a very surprising conclusion." They also say that the poll is "out of date", because the responses were collected in early November before George Osborne's December financial statement. It is argued by Tory strategists that this event changed things by switching focus away from Labour's preferred territory of living standards and back on to overall economic competence where the Conservatives are rated more strongly.

It may be true that some voters have moved around since the fieldwork was conducted. Yet I still find this poll illuminating because of what it says about the interaction between Ashcroft's different groups and how hard it will be for the Tory party to win over all of them at once.

The majority of the Joiners are people who voted Lib Dem in 2010 and they are more likely than the Loyalists to say that they would like to see the next election lead to another Con-Lib coalition. The Considerers are a small group, but a vital one. In a tight election, their votes could make the difference between the Tories being returned to power or being dispatched to the opposition benches. They prefer David Cameron as prime minister to Ed Miliband, but they are wary of the Conservatives in other respects. Much more than any other group, or voters as a whole, they prefer coalition to the idea of the Conservatives having an overall majority. It is fair to conclude that many of these voters are fearful of what the Tories would get up to unconstrained by having to share power.

The Defectors are very different. Less than one in five of those who have abandoned the Tories has switched to Labour or the Lib Dems. That is a measure of Labour failure. Labour is doing badly at taking voters directly from the Tories, a major drag on Labour's prospects that Ed Miliband would be sensible to address this year.

It is – as you may have guessed – Ukip that has captured the bulk of those voters who have turned away from the Tories. More than half of the Defectors are currently saying they will vote for the Farageists at the next election. There is some potentially consoling news for the Tories from this Ashcroft poll. Not all the Defectors are irretrievably lost to the Conservatives. More than half of the Defectors say they want a Tory government after the next election, which will encourage Tory election planners to hope that they might scare some of them back with the slogan: "Vote Farage, Get Miliband."

Elements of the Tory right will be encouraged in their belief, deepened by fears of losses in this year's Euro-elections, that what voters really yearn for is what they like to call "proper Conservative government". Their formula for getting back voters lost to Nigel Farage or tempted by him is to strike more postures imitative of Ukip. Moderate Tories fear that Mr Cameron has already lurched too far in that direction. The latest of his old allies to sound a warning is Danny Kruger, a former speech-writer for the Tory leader. In today's <em>Observer</em>, Mr Kruger laments that his old boss "seems set on a defensive strategy: to see off Ukip by bashing burglars and immigrants".

It is highly debatable whether it will work anyway. Even if imitation does appeal to some of the Ukip-inclined Defectors, chasing after them is highly likely to repel the more centrist Joiners and Considerers.

This is the strategic conundrum that has faced the Tories for a long time now and it will become more vexed in the next 12 months. The Ashcroft poll underlines how far away they are from finding a way to resolve it.

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