Poll shows press attacks on Clegg help Libdems


by Sunny Hundal    
11:32 am - April 29th 2010

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An official poll carried out for the LibdemVoice blog shows that press attacks on Nick Clegg and the Libdems have actually increased their support.

When asked:

The newspapers in this country tend to take a position and support different parties at election time. It has been suggested that the Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph do not want Nick Clegg to be Prime Minister. If those newspapers were to take this stance would that make you more or less likely to vote Liberal Democrat?

15% said it made them more likely to vote Liberal Democrat and only 4% said it made them less likely.

Of the rest, 19% would vote Liberal Democrat regardless, 35% would not vote Liberal Democrat anyway and 27% said it wouldn’t alter their vote but they weren’t yet sure which way to vote.

LDV’s Mark Pack said yesterday:

The question doesn’t capture the potential agenda setting power of these three newspapers, but on the other hand the question was (deliberately) asked in a low key way, with no reference for example to the tax or residence status of newspaper proprietors such as Rupert Murdoch or the Barclay brothers.

Moreover, so far part of the impact of the three titles running strident anti-Liberal Democrat stories has been to generate coverage by TV broadcasters about whether or not a smear operation is taking place.

Libdem support has fallen slightly from its peak but that was to be expected. As yet however, most polls show the Libdems at above 30% support.

The poll was carried out for LDV by Angus Reid.

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About the author
Sunny Hundal is editor of LC. Also: on Twitter, at Pickled Politics and Guardian CIF.
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Reader comments


1. C'llr. Rupert Read

Fatal flaw in methodology: to have been meaningful, poll should have massively been weighted towards READER OF THOSE NEWSPAPERS.

2. Red

@1. Your own suggestion has a flaw – readers of these newspapers would be less likely to vote Lib Dem, because anyone with any kind of sympathies towards that party would have almost certainly stopped reading. And considering that the internet is able to cover & analyse a paper’s stance on something, it is no longer necessary to be a reader to be aware of the coverage (hell, you’d have to be living under a rock not to have noticed those papers’ increasingly desperate behaviour towards Clegg).

I think what you mean is: ‘given the result that you would like to see’, yes?

3. sally

Don’t believe that.

We will see what happens next week when the tory press throw the kitchen sink at Labour/lib dems.

if it does not work they would not be doing it.

4. Rupert Read

The bottom line is that [proportionately] far more readers of those newspapers will have read these stories than non-readers will have heard of them.
So the LDV story is itself misleading.
So no surprise there then.

5. Blanco

Hi Rupert. Quite the expert on misleading allegations aren’t you:

http://www.libdemvoice.org/rupert-read-norwich-north-15499.html

“Rupert Read accused a Liberal Democrat councillor, Judith Lubbock, of perjuring herself more than once. Given that perjury is a serious offence which can result in someone being jailed (see Jeffrey Archer), this is a pretty serious allegation. It was also wholly untrue. Rupert Read subsequently had to apologise and withdraw the allegations he had made.”

And:

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2009/08/greens-throw-mud-in-internal-party.html

“I have been amazed by how much mud has been thrown at Tracy Dighton-Brown the current External comms member of the Green Party Executive… Wasn’t it Rupert Read who launched, to great fanfares, his “clean politics pledge” during the Norwich North campaign?”

And:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/13/hugh-muir-diary

“Most of all they lament that things have sunk to this.”

So no surprise then.

6. Alix

@Cllr Read

“So the LDV story is itself misleading.
So no surprise there then.”

Good god. Even if you were right about the methodology, that’s a really odd and unpleasant conclusion to leap to.

7. Reginald Fah-Fah

Bloody marvellous! the Great English Gentleman David Cameron won last nigh’ts leader’s debate, it was like bring back fox hunting with a group of dogs.

Hong Kong!, the desperate Gordon Brown was trying to frighten the ‘yellow belly voters’ to vote for Labour. Yellow bellies get voting! Gordon Brown’s little joke: “Them two remind me of my two children fighting over bathtime.” He also knew the different between a woman and a man.!

Bang on! Nick Clegg done the leg work again but no one really understands what he stands for. One has to question himself whether he understands what he stands for


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