Green party overtakes Lib Dems in new opinion poll

The Green party has taken a small lead over the Liberal Democrats in a new opinion poll, prompting demands for the broadcasters to acknowledge a “political revolution” is under way in Britain and include the party in the television general election debates.

As a veteran polling analyst suggested that Labour’s standing may be inflated by shy Tory voters, who are reluctant to express support for the Conservatives, an opinion poll by Lord Ashcroft placed the Greens up three points on 11%, giving the party a small lead over the Lib Dems, whose vote share increased by one point to 9%.

Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP for Brighton Pavilion, said the poll findings and the doubling in the party’s membership in the past two months showed that her party should now be included in the television debates. “There really is a political revolution going on here and it just seems so perverse that the broadcasters and Ofcom seem to be turning their face against it,” she said.

“They seem to be the only people in the country with their fingers in the ears and their hands over their eyes and simply not hearing the fact that something big is happening in British politics.”

The Greens have stepped up their campaign to be included in the debates by releasing a poster, featuring Lucas and the Green party leader, Natalie Bennett, which says: “What are you afraid of, boys?” David Cameron has said that he will not take part in television debates unless the Greens are included. Tory sources acknowledge in private that the prime minister’s newfound interest in the Greens is designed to find him a way of avoiding the debates without being seen to kill them off.

The broadcasters are proposing three debates. One would be between Cameron and Ed Miliband, one would feature the two main party leaders plus Nick Clegg while another debate would feature the three Westminster leaders plus Nigel Farage.

The Greens have not been invited because the broadcasters anticipated the recent suggestion by Ofcom that Ukip should count as a major party while the Greens should be a minor party. Ofcom makes its judgments based on the performance of parties in elections – national and local; byelections; on their showing in the BBC Poll of Polls, which includes data from all the main pollsters; and on data from the Polling Observatory.

The renewed row over the debates came as the veteran polling analyst Rob Hayward suggested that opinion polls may be overstating Labour’s support by as much as four percentage points.

Hayward, the Tory MP for Kingswood between 1983-92 who still advises his party, reached his conclusion after comparing opinion polls with actual election results over the past year. He found that the average 36% recorded by Labour at the time of last year’s local elections was five points ahead of the 31% it achieved. The average “miss” between the average poll findings and actual results, as Hayward calls it, was 3.7% in parliamentary byelections and 2% in the European elections.

Hayward said: “On the balance of probability in any poll that is published it is likely that the Labour vote will be overstated and the Conservative and Green vote will be understated. [The overstatement] could be around 3-4% for the Labour party and for the Tories and Greens [the understatement] is somewhere between 1-2%. It is good news for the Tory party, it is good news for the Greens and it is not such good news for the Labour party.”

Amid this background, Hayward suggests that if an election were held now the Labour party would be the largest single party. But he added of the actual election in May: “The Tories will be ahead of the Labour party in terms of numbers of votes. Whether it is ahead enough in terms of seats is another matter. But I do think the Tories will outvote the Labour party.”

But Hayward suggested there was encouraging news for Labour in Scotland, which has been deeply alarmed by a surge in support for the SNP since the referendum last September. Hayward said that council byelections in Scotland since the referendum, most of which have been held in rural areas, suggest there is “no consistent thread of the SNP surging”. He added: “They have done well in some and not in others. It is inconsistent and therefore it [the SNP surge] is an unanswered question.”

The other findings in the Ashcroft poll were Conservatives down five points on 29%, Labour unchanged on 28% and Ukip down one on 15%.