Saturday 19 May 2012

ComRes puts UKIP on 7%

A ComRes poll has UKIP on 7% amongst those who have indicated that they intend to vote with the Lib Dems on 9%.

Interestingly, while the 26% of traditional Conservative voters saying they would vote UKIP if there were a general election tomorrow is almost a given nowadays, a surprisingly high 14% of Lib Dem and 11% of Labour voters said they too would vote UKIP.

One interesting and quite odd statistic is that if voting was a legal requirement, 6% would vote UKIP or Lib Dem but 7% would vote Green.  If voting was voluntary, only 2% would vote Green which would suggest that either environmentalism doesn't motivate people enough to actually go out and vote for it or the left wing extremism that underpins the Green Party's wide manifesto is a big turn off.

UKIP and the Greens are the parties most likely to attract floating or protest voters according to the question "who would you seriously consider voting for at a general election".  13% of respondents said they would seriously consider voting UKIP or Lib Dem while only 10% said Lib Dem and 9% said Labour or Conservative.

The most surprising statistic of all is that 7% of people who consider themselves to be UKIP think leaving the EU would be bad for jobs and trade and 3% would vote to stay in the EU in a referendum and 6% don't know.  UKIP is clearly attracting people who are soft on the EU but support UKIP's other policies enough to vote for the party.  If a referendum were held on leaving the EU, 46% of people would vote to leave, 30% would vote to stay in and 24% are undecided.