Thoughts on politics and life from a liberal perspective

Sunday 18 April 2010

Three more days and this could start to affect real votes

The massive leaps in the polls that we have seen for the Lib Dems since the middle of last week (interestingly, the 7% leap in one of the polls was from fieldwork done largely before Thursday's debate) have of course got us activists a bit giddy.


Some commentators and lots of our opponents are saying that this is just a bounce and that the status quo will be restored soon. They are also suggesting that the second and third debates will go very differently and not as well for Clegg. Well they were saying that before the first one and as I will explore in another post later today there are no easy options for Cameron and Brown to counter Clegg in the next debate.

However there is an important factor to note here. The postal votes start going out after this Tuesday, the final deadline to register. We also know that lots of those who vote postally do so very soon after their postal vote arrives. So we are in a situation where within three or so days, the increase in Lib Dem support could start to have an actual effect on real votes.

The Tories and Labour will be well aware of this and for that reason will be looking to try and do something about it as soon as possible, probably by going for a full-on attack.

I am sure we are prepared for that though.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It looks as though postal voters will have to wait until next week for their ballot papers.

'Your ballot paper will be sent to you in the post a week before the election',
according to an FAQ at parliament.uk