2010 voters: where are they now?

In the week YouGov put up some figures comparing people's responses in May 2010 with their opinions now, based on the aggregated data from all the daily polls in November. The main purpose was to look at what has happened to people who voted Lib Dem in 2010, but we can also see what has happened to other parties' votes.

73% of people who told YouGov in 2010 that they would vote Conservative would still do so today - the biggest losses are 8% to other parties (which will largely be UKIP), and 12% of former Tory voters saying they don't know what they would do. There is very little shift from Tory to Labour - only 3% of 2010 Tory voters would now vote Labour.

Labour have the best retention of their 2010 vote (unsurprisingly, given they are considerably above their 2010 vote in current polls!). 80% of people who voted Labour in 2010 would do so now, the biggest loss is 9% of people who don't know, the other lost votes are split across the board.

Finally the Lib Dems. Note first that this is people said they voted Lib Dem in 2010 - as we know, the polls in 2010 overestimated the level of Lib Dem support, so some of these lost Lib Dem voters probably didn't actually vote Lib Dem in May 2010 either). That caveat aside, of those who said they voted Lib Dem in 2010 only 25% say they would vote Lib Dem tomorrow. Another 26% would vote Labour, 9% would vote Conservative and 24% don't know what they would do.

This big chunk of former Lib Dems saying don't know is, incidently, the reason for some of the big contrast in the Lib Dem scores reported by different companies: ICM and Populus estimate a proportion of these don't knows will end up voting Lib Dem in practice, and allocate them back to the party in their topline figures.

Looking at the decline in the Lib Dem vote, there are some obvious trends - people who voted for the Lib Dem tactically are most likely to have left, people who voted Lib Dem primarily for Clegg are more likely to have been lost than those who voted Lib Dem for policy reasons, people who decided to vote Lib Dem during the 2010 campaign are much more likely to have abandoned the party than longer term supporters. None of these are remotely surprising!

In looking at the Lib Dem drop in support though, it's important to note point made by Mark Pack here - the Lib Dems normally have much higher churn than the other two main parties, it's perfectly normal for them to lose lots of voters from one election to the next. It's just that in the past these have been replaced by new voters. The Lib Dems are currently picking up very, very few new voters. Only 1% of people who voted Conservative or Labour last time say they would vote Lib Dem in a general election tomorrow.