A “blue wall” of voters in the southwest makes the prospect of a Liberal Democrat electoral bounce-back in the region unlikely, analysis suggests.
Tim Farron’s party has set its sights on regaining seats in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall on June 8 that it ceded to the Conservatives at the 2015 election.
However, despite a history of support in the region, built on local identities and high levels of non-conformism, the outlook is not good.
Only five of the 14 seats the Lib Dems lost are true marginals, where Mr Farron’s party is less than 10 points behind the incumbent Conservative, the study by Matthew Goodwin, professor of politics at Kent University, and David Cutts, senior lecturer in politics at Bath University, points out.
They said: “Such was the scale of their defeat in 2015, many seats outside of these five marginals would require the Lib Dems to capture at least 6 per cent and up to 9 per cent of votes directly from the Conservatives. There is currently no evidence in the polls that they are doing this.”
The notion that the Lib Dems could ride a pro-Remain wave in the region to win back seats was “deeply flawed”, the academics said in an article published by The Times Red Box website today.
They added: “While there are clear clusters of support for Remain in places like Bristol, Bath, Cheltenham, Exeter and Stroud, the southwest as a whole voted strongly for Brexit. Moreover, in previous Liberal Democrat strongholds like North Cornwall, St Austell and Newquay & Torbay, the estimated vote for Brexit surpassed 60 per cent.”
The third factor rendering a Lib Dem comeback in the region difficult is the past success of Ukip there, which could translate into more votes for the Conservatives this electoral cycle. In 11 of the 14 seats the Lib Dems lost to the Tories at the last election, Ukip polled at least 10 per cent.
Current polling suggests that former Ukip voters are “switching en masse to the Conservatives”, the academics noted, pointing to the most recent wave of the British Election Study from December, which suggested that a third had switched and that the phenomenon was harder in the southwest than nationwide.
Recent YouGov polling underlined the trend, suggesting that about 40 per cent of Ukip voters would back the Tories in the election.
The psephologists said: “This realignment on the right will impose a higher ‘blue wall’ for the Lib Dems to overcome in many southwest seats and will make a recovery harder than many people currently realise.”
The pair were also sceptical about the strength of the Lib Dems’ ability to win the votes of pro-Remain Tories. “Of the 2015 Conservative voters who opted for Remain, 68 per cent intend to vote for the Conservative party again. The remainder are certainly not moving en masse to the Liberal Democrats — in fact only 8 per cent are, while 19 per cent say they do not know/won’t vote.”
A significant proportion of pro-Remain Conservatives “have clearly prioritised their party identification and Theresa May’s leadership over their attitudes toward EU membership”, they said.
In addition, there was “no evidence of a major shift” among 2015 pro-Remain Labour voters. “Of the 2015 Labour voters who voted Remain, 64 per cent are planning to stay with Labour, only 10 per cent switch to the Liberal Democrats,” the pair said.
Mr Goodwin said the “blue wall” of voters in the southwest looked “impregnable”.
Today Mrs May will tour the southwest, pledging to “earn every vote”. In an article for the Western Morning News she appealed to voters in the region to reject the opposition, saying: “I am determined not to allow parties like the Liberal Democrats to prosper, because it is in their interests to prop up a Corbyn coalition of chaos so that the Brexit process stalls and they can reopen the battles of the past.”
Acknowledging the importance of winning the region in the last election, the prime minister added: “At the last election, voters here in the southwest were the difference between a strong, majority government and a weak, unstable coalition of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP.”
