YouGov still puts UKIP's result in brackets at the end of their headline voting intention as if it's an afterthought or also-ran and lumps the party in with the "others" when asking polling. We're still working on them to get them to take UKIP seriously but it's really getting quite ridiculous. UKIP is consistently polling between 1% behind and 2% ahead of the Lib Dems - the junior party of the coalition - yet YouGov still treats the party as some sort of statistical anomaly.
Had the last local elections been held under some form of PR, it is estimated that UKIP could have won around 400 seats yet because of the antiquated First Past the Post system we use, we ended up with 9.
Anyway, the regional breakdown is quite interesting. Remember that the sample sizes are way too low to be even vaguely accurate and they don't have any weighting applied to the them but they are useful for establishing a trend. In London the Lib Dems are on 5% and UKIP on 3%, whilst in Scotland the Lib Dems are on 4% and UKIP on 2%. But those are the only two polling regions where the Lib Dems are ahead of UKIP. In the north of England both are level on 7%, in the south of England (excluding London) UKIP is on 12% with the Lib Dems on 9% but in the midlands/Wales polling region UKIP is on 12% witht he Lib Dems on just 7%. UKIP support in the midlands/Wales polling region is traditionally suppressed because Wales and the midlands are like chalk and cheese - different country, different political system, different government and of course like Scotland, Wales is ideologically socialist - so the gap (albeit taken with a pinch of salt) probably belies an even bigger gulf between the two.
wonkotsane is an author at Bloggers4UKIP.
Posts
