Final leaders' debate - My verdict

I was in Birmingham yesterday in a Starbucks on the university campus with Radio 5 Live and their invited audience to watch the final leaders' debate. Then afterwards I was on a panel on air until after midnight discussing how things had gone.

I must admit as the debate finished I would have just given it to Clegg by a nose. I thought the way he handled being berated from both sides about immigration was very good and that he explained the policy very clearly. There were also other very good moments and he kept mentioning the £10K tax threshold which is absolutely right to underline to people who may not have watched the other debates how they would be better off. However I also knew that Cameron had done well. He seemed very confident and was effective at firing questions at the other two leaders, especially Clegg. I am sorry to say that by the end Brown seemed like a diminished figure. One of the last things he said sounded to me like he was basically conceding that he has lost the election.

As it turns out though the instant polls following the debate all gave it to Cameron. Some by a fair way but there were a couple where it was pretty close between Cameron and Clegg with one of them actually tying them in the lead. The averages of all 5 polls I saw were Cameron 38%, Clegg 32% and Brown 26%. I think Clegg did better than that suggests but of course I am biased.

So now that the debates are over there are just the final few days of the campaign. As I said on the very lively radio show afterwards (which you can listen to here on iPlayer for the next few days) taken as a whole, the 3 debates have been a stunning success for the Lib Dems. We are now averaging around 30% in the polls rather than around 21% or 22% just before them two and a bit weeks ago. Given an equivalent platform to the other two leaders, people have warmed to Clegg and the things he has to say.

One thing is certain in my mind. After the 2010 election, any future campaigns will have to include debates like this. Students of the future will study these few weeks when the nature of UK general election campaigning changed irrevocably.

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 29th April 2010 - #bbcqt

Following the final leaders' debate, the #bbcqt Live Chat starts on this blog at 10:40pm (show starts at 10:45pm on BBC1). The same as the last two weeks, the show is being broadcast live this week so that the panel and audience can watch the leader debates (this week on BBC1) and then respond to how they have gone on the programme.

This week I am again unavailable during the programme but Lib Dem blogger Matt Raven (known on Twitter as @El_Cuervo) is again standing in.

The panel includes the Schools Secretary Ed Balls, the Liberal Democrats' treasury spokesman Vince Cable, the SNP leader Alex Salmond and the broadcaster and journalist Janet Street Porter.

Join Matt below from 10:40pm:

Leader Election Debate Live Chat - 3

Here it is then. The final leaders' debate is tonight at 8:30pm on BBC1. This time the focus is the economy and as for the last two weeks we are running a Live Chat on here which will also be running simultaneously on Lib Dem Voice. Apologies again but this week I am going to be on a Radio 5 Live panel on Tony Livesey's show directly after the debate and hence will be in Birmingham and not be able to moderate it. However I do hope to be able to dip in and out of the chat WiFi permitting! It would be good to be able to get a flavour of what everyone on here thinks to be able to mention during the show. Matt Raven has once again heroically stepped into the breach and will be your moderator.

Please join Matt (and hopefully me at various points) below from just before 8:30pm:

After Leaders' Debate number 2 Nick Clegg now looks Prime Ministerial

Well I didn't actually get to watch it live last night because I was at an awards ceremony with my company. Instead I watched some this morning and then finished off watching it over lunch just now.

So this time I had read other people's blogs, tweets and comments about it all before I actually watched it for myself. It was a bit less exciting for me than last week's because I knew there were no major gaffes coming up.

Anyway, I agree with what quite a lot of people have said in that the standard of both Cameron and Brown was higher. Clegg also did well; I would say he was at about the same level as last week but because the others had raised their game (I can imagine the hard work they put in behind the scenes for this) the relative positions were much more even.

I tried to be as unpartisan as I could (as far as that is possible in such a febrile election atmosphere where so much is at stake!) as I watched. Here are a few of my thoughts:

• Both Brown and Cameron were careful to not explicitly state that they agreed with Nick (at least in any way that could easily be mocked afterwards) but there were a number of times when they basically did agree. They just didn't draw attention to it. An example that jumped out was respite for carers. Cameron's answer was almost identical to Clegg's on this but no indication of this was made.
• Brown was much, much better than last week. He actually came across as a bit human which he usually fails to do. He also actually managed to make some good points in a few places and was quite deft at turning things back onto both of his opponents. Even the "get real" line he used against Clegg was well delivered (although I of course don't agree with the sentiment).
• Cameron was also better than last week. He looked at the camera a lot more which was a help. I thought the way he slapped down Clegg on expenses was well done. I actually do think Clegg has a good story to tell on this and that Lib Dem MPs were not as bad as Labour or Tories but it is a difficult sell and I think it might be time to relegate that line now. It just gave Cameron the opportunity to appear more statesmanlike by claiming nobody was a saint which is of course true. Clegg was then on the back-foot expressing agreement with Cameron's riposte which I expect will not have played so well.
• I also thought that in the segment in the middle, Cameron, finally made a good-ish job of defining what his "big society" theme is now. I still think the policy is quite wishy-washy and would probably not come to very much in practise but I think the way he sold it would may come across well to some undecideds (if they don't think it through too much!).
• I thought Clegg's closing speech was masterful. It touched upon the feeling that really does seem to be growing in the country that this time, at last, something extraordinary could happen and a truly mould-breaking change could be on its way. He also implicitly addressed how he has been treated by the media in the last couple of days but in a very matter of fact "of course people with a vested interest are going to try and stop change". I even scribbled down the last two sentences as they were pitch perfect: "Don't let anyone tell you that this time it can't be different. It can!". That is about as neat a riposte to all the negativity as you can get I think.

I'm not going to score it but I think an average of the 5 polls I have seen probably have it about right with Clegg just pipping Cameron and Brown nipping at both their heels having made up a fair bit of lost ground on last week.

I just wanted to say one last thing which I expect people from other parties will dismiss as partisan cheer-leading but it is a feeling I really got watching this today that I honestly have never felt up until now. Maybe it is because of the movement in the polls. Maybe it is because I was watching the leader of my party speak following a week where in several polls we have for the first time in years actually been in first place in terms of vote share. But what I felt was that on that podium, standing in the middle with his completely unflappable resolve dealing with every question so well that he actually looked Prime Ministerial. There. I said it. And I mean it. That doesn't mean I think he will become PM. But I think he is now a plausible candidate for the office.

I wonder if that is a feeling that some of the undecideds watching that last night will also have had...

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 22nd April 2010 - #bbcqt

It's that time of the week again and the #bbcqt Live Chat starts on this blog at 10:40pm (show starts at 10:45pm on BBC1). The same as last week, the show is being broadcast live this week so that the panel and audience can watch the leader debates (this week on Sky) and then respond to how they have gone on the programme.

This week I am again unavailable during the programme (sorry - unavoidable work award do thing) but Lib Dem blogger Matt Raven (known on Twitter as @El_Cuervo) is again standing in.

The panel includes the Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper, the shadow foreign secretary William Hague, the former Liberal Democrat leader Ming Campbell, Plaid Cymru's leader at Westminster Elfyn Llwyd and the journalist Ann Leslie.

Join Matt below from 10:40pm:

Leader Election Debate Live Chat - 2

So following the first debate and Nick Clegg's performance the Lib Dems have shot up in the polls. Will the second debate tonight on foreign policy make any further difference?

We are running a Live Chat on here which will also be running simultaneously on Lib Dem Voice. I am indisposed but Matt Raven and Stephen Tall will be moderating. We will also be running this for the final debate next week too.

Please join Matt and Stephen below from 8:30pm:

The Lib Dem surge started before the leader debate

Political Betting this morning draws our attention to something that I was aware but seems to be getting lost in the media Lib Dem surge narrative and how the leader debate has been a "game changer". The surge actually started before the leader debate last Thursday.

Mike Smithson points out that there was a marginals poll that showed the Lib Dems were blunting Tory progress there and were up 5 points. That was a week before the debate.

He goes on:

Then exactly a week later a ICM finalised a standard national poll and found a sharp move to Clegg’s party putting the share up to 27 points. The survey had gone on over two days and almost all of if had been completed before the session started in Manchester.

Because that poll was published two days later it became part of the debate impact narrative.

So by the time that Nick Clegg made his opening statement the yellows were on a roll anyway. His assured performance was the icing on the cake.

Looking at the post debate polling as part of broad mood change amongst voters suggests that it might be more sustained than many are predicting.

I think this is important. It suggests that the surge might be more durable than some think and whilst I am sure the leader debate had an impact it may not be the whole story.

Tories and Labour are snookered

It's appropriate that the polls are showing the Lib Dems surging into second (and in a couple of polls first) place following the leaders debate on Thursday just at the point when the largest event in the Snooker calendar, the World Championships at the mighty Crucible (coincidentally in Sheffield, Nick Clegg's patch) start. Because frankly, as far as I can see the other parties are now pretty much snookered when it comes to their options of how to deal with the Lib Dems and Clegg. Let's have a run-down of the sort of things they will be war-gaming and indeed that we have started to see being played out:

1) They can hug Clegg and the Lib Dems closer. The problem is they were both trying this last Thursday to varying degrees and all it did was make Clegg look more important and as if he is the cool kid that everyone wants to like them and to be like. Hence all the "I agree with Nick" stuff. This has surely already contributed to the Lib Dem poll surge.

2) They can try and attack the Lib Dems on policy. However, firstly this plays into our hands as Oscar Wilde once said, there is only one thing worse than being talked about and that's not being talked about. It will allow us to respond with more detail on what are well worked out and well costed plans. It also means that the media is focusing on us even more. If Brown and/or Cameron do this too much during the next two debates it also plays into Clegg's hands by allowing him to continue to make the point that they are doing politics in the same old tired and discredited ways.

3) One thing I have noticed is that some Tories seem to think that going for the Lib Dems on immigration will be a good strategy. They might just want to refresh their memory of the 2005 campaign and how quickly they were able to be painted as "same old Tories" when they tried this on then. And also what the eventual result was.

4) They can try and argue that a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote for a hung parliament and that would be dreadful. The Tories are continuing to try this one on. The problem is that recent polling suggests that that is the outcome that scores the highest in terms of what people actually want to see of all the possible outcomes. So they are actually scaremongering that something could happen that people actually want. Is that really smart politics?

5) They can try and argue that "a vote for Clegg is a vote for Brown" or the other way round that "a vote for Clegg is a vote for Cameron". The problem is firstly that people are again sick of hearing this sort of nonsense. But secondly, now the Lib Dems are polling at or above the same level as the other parties it is now patently absurd. A vote for Clegg is a vote for Clegg. Simples.

I'm not sure there are many other options open to the other parties now either. The media narrative is with the Lib Dems and who would have thought I would be writing that a couple of weeks ago?

Unless one of the other leaders can find a way to come off three or four cushions with just the right amount of side then they could find it very difficult to get out of this particular snooker.

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.

Lib Dem post debate poll bounce and broken politics

The Twitterverse went into overdrive a couple of hours ago when the results of a ComRes poll taken straight after the debate were released suggesting that Lib Dem support had gone up by 14 points with:

Conservative 36% (+1)

Lib Dems 35% (+14)

Labour 24% (-5)

This was obviously hugely exciting news for the Lib Dems. It turned out though that those are the numbers from respondents who watched the debate rather than from the general public. They subsequently released a "weighted" version of the poll. I am not sure of the exact methodology they use to do this but these results were:

Conservative 35% (nc)

Lib Dems 24% (+3)

Labour 28% (-1)

The first thing to say is that regardless of the initial confusion about the first set of results both polls are still very good news for the Lib Dems, albeit we will need to see some more polling over the next day or two to see if it stands up and shows a trend. The second weighted one shows that there still appears to have been an decent increase in support. However the first one shows that it looks like there is great support in terms of voting intentions from the people who watched the programme. It is of course possible that more Lib Dem inclined people than make up the average population watched it but I don't think that could explain such a huge shift (if that view was repeated in other unweighted polls). It is also worth noting that those who watched the programme are almost certainly more likely to vote if they are motivated enough to watch a 1.5 hour long debate with the three leaders.

Another point worth making is to just run with the idea that the numbers in the first unweighted poll actually happened in a general election. Here is what would happen according to the calculator on UK Polling Report:

So despite the fact that we would get nearly half again as many votes as Labour, they would still have 30 odd % more seats than us. And although we would be within a hair's breadth of the Conservative share of the vote, only 1% behind them, they would get twice as many seats as us.

It's interesting how the results of these post-debate polls are actually highlighting one of the things that Nick Clegg kept referring to during the debate itself which is that our politics is broken.

I think that message really chimes with the British public and the sort of distortion we see here will become harder and harder to defend if the Lib Dem vote share solidifies in the mid-20s where it appears to be immediately after the debate.

I agree with Nick

"I agree with Nick". That was the phrase used over and over again by David Cameron and Gordon Brown during last night's first ever general election leader debate on ITV1. In isolation the use of that phrase would have seemed consensual and reflected well on them but the fact that they said it so many times ended up making it clear that Clegg was actually setting the agenda. I expect Brown and Cameron didn't actually realise what they had done in this respect until afterwards.

According to most commentators and all the post-match polls I have seen, Clegg is perceived to have won the debate by a fair way (here's one polling example). I certainly thought that as I watched it and I did try to watch with one eye looking at it from a neutral perspective. Here are my brief thoughts on each leader:

Clegg: I thought he was clear in his points and very up on the detail of policies. Whenever he was challenged he was able to spell out how things would be paid for and show his working as it were. He also peppered his answers with personal anecdotes to underline his message. On the live chat I was running we all had some fun with this whenever one of the leaders did this shouting "ANECDOTE!" but the truth is that this sort of response is known to play very well with people. Any aspiring politician training course worth its salt will emphasise how important it is to bring in personal stories. He also, crucially in my view looked directly into the camera for all his answers making sure that he was connecting directly with the millions of people at home rather than the 200 people in the audience. His frequent references to "these two" and lumping Labour and Conservatives into the category of the old broken politics was very effective as well I thought. There were a couple of moments when he appeared to need a moment or two to gather his thoughts and as a result seems to slightly stumble over his words but on the biggest night of his political life this was only to be expected. Overall a great performance and he justifiably is perceived to have won the debate.

Cameron: I thought his opening and closing speeches were very solid (especially his closing one) and he was also very up on the detail of his policies. Like Clegg he made lots of use of personal anecdote too. However he also made some debating errors. For example at one point he gifted Clegg the opportunity to spell out how the £10K tax rate would be paid for by directly asking him. He must have known Clegg would know the details, they are in the manifesto! There was also an ill-chosen anecdote regarding immigration where he specifically pointed out that a "black man" had complained to his about immigration. That did not go down well on our live chat and I have seen numerous negative references to this by bloggers and commentators too. Cameron should excise that story from his list in future. He also seemed reluctant to go for Gordon Brown which frankly he really needed to. This was his opportunity to expose Brown and he really seemed to fluff it. He will need to raise his game in the remaining two debates.

Brown: He did better than I was expecting and actually came across as OK and vaguely human. Unsurprisingly he was up on the detail behind his policies too but as usual this tipped over into tractor statistics. He also has the insoluble "13 years" problem. Every time he says something that he intends to do to resolve a problem I just keep thinking "but you've had 13 years". He didn't make much use of personal anecdote which I think says much about his political style preferring to fire out statistics in the hope of blinding everyone with numbers. He is widely perceived to have done worst of the three leaders and for an incumbent Prime Minister looking for another five years last night will have done his re-election chances no good at all.

One other thing about Clegg. We now need to be careful with all the plaudits that he will be receiving over the next day or two that we don't end up in a position where the expectations for the second and third debate on him are so high that he can never meet them. Let's keep things in perspective. He did very well as those of us who have seen him many times knew that he was capable of but there is still a long way to go in this campaign. He needs to prepare for 2 and 3 as hard (if not harder) than he did for the first one. But if he keeps going the way that he has gone so far then I think Lib Dems have a lot to be positive about.

Finally, I would also like to just give some praise to David Cameron for having agreed to do these debates. He definitely had the most to lose of the three. I know he sort of painted himself into a corner by having strongly called for Brown to do them when Cameron himself was behind in the polls but even so he could have wriggled out using the time-honoured tradition of not agreeing on the rules for the debate and then blaming his opponents. He didn't and instead allowed an historic occasion to happen yesterday. I expect he has set a precedent for all future election campaigns and we should thank him for that.

Last night however belongs to Nick Clegg. It will be interesting to see if the Lib Dem polling numbers rise in the next few days on the back of this. They surely deserve to based on his performance.

Leader Election Debate Live Chat - 1

So the time is finally upon us. At 8:30pm tonight we will finally see the first ever debate between the three main party leaders during a General Election campaign in the UK broadcast live on ITV1. I know they have been doing this in the US for the last 50 years but you know, it takes us a little while to catch up!

Anyway, to mark this auspicious occasion, we are running a Live Chat on here which will also be running simultaneously on Lib Dem Voice. Myself and Stephen Tall will be moderating. We will also be running these for the second and third debates in the coming weeks too.

Please join us below from 8:30pm to give us the benefit of your wisdom and your thoughts on their performances as Clegg, Cameron and Brown battle it out: