Post by Tony Otim on May 29, 2013 11:36:57 GMT
www.comres.co.uk/polls/Open_Europe_EU_and_Westminster_VI_Poll_May_2013.pdf
One thing that strikes me is how low the Green Party are polling. I have thought for some time that the Green Party have not been doing nearly as well as might be expected. The ComRes poll show them getting only 4% for the Euro poll.
Now of course this is just one poll and I expect they'll get more than that on the day but I haven't seen any evidence that they will make any advance on 2009 in 2014. Natalie Bennett has said she wants to win 6 Euro seats in 2014. At the moment that's looking very optimistic.
This far out from the elections without any campaigning yet i'd be surprised if we were polling any better than that. I doubt we were polling any better than that a year in advance last time either.
However, I think we've established that this Comres poll is a bit ropey, so I'm not reading too much into that at the moment. In 2009 other parties (Not the big 4) polled 26%. Whilst I'd expect that to be fairly down next year - no expenses scandal, fall in BNP support, rise of UKIP, etc... but 11% seems a little on the low side (it was almost 20% in 2004), but then polling companies are pretty bad at picking this up generally.
Not that I'm saying that it's a foregone conclusion that there will be Green gains next year - I think in many ways the circumstances are less favourable to us than they were 5 years ago (which is where I'd take issue with your not been doing as well as expected - for us an unpopular Labour government with the expenses scandal going on is pretty close to optimum conditions, so this electoral cycle was always going to be much more difficult for us, that we've continued to pick up seats is an achievement, although as I've said elsewhere, there's always room for improvement). So next year will be a tough battler for us. FWIW at the moment, I think Green results maybe patchy - falling back in some regions and gaining in others, so what we might see is maybe 1 or 2 extra seats on a similar vote share. Still there's a long way to go yet and things may change.