Where have the Lib Dems gone?
Depending on which pollster's figures you look at the Liberal Democrats have lost between a quarter and a half of their support since the last election. Where has it gone? Who will lose out if they recover?
The graphs below shows the voting intention of respondents in ICM's polls for respondents who said they voted for each of the main parties in 2005*. When I started this post I was going to look just at the Lib Dems, but actually it is as interesting to look at the others too. Hopefully it's self explanatory which is which - white is those who told ICM their chance of voting was less than 7/10, grey the don't knows and won't says, purple other parties and gold, red, blue are Lib Dem, Labour and Conservative. Looking at the individual breaks on each graph can't tell us much - the sample size is small and the figures erratic - so these are rolling averages of the three most recent polls.
Looking at those people who told ICM they voted Tory in 2005 they remain very loyal. Over 70% consistently say they would vote Tory again, what leakage there is goes mostly to don't knows and not sure to votes - very few people who voted Tory in 2005 say they'll vote for other parties, and when they do it has a tendency to be for "other" parties like UKIP. Even at the height of the Brown bounce few would vote for Labour. The 2005 Tory vote is solid.
Moving to Labour we should add a caveat. People who tell ICM they voted Labour in 2005 are not necessarily the same as people who actually voted Labour in 2005. Because of false recall many of those people who say they voted Labour are actually people who didn't vote at all, or people who actually voted tactically (or as a protest) for the Lib Dems. Hence the reason why former Labour voters look less likely to vote may just be because they didn't actually vote last time either!
Looking at how people who say they voted Labour say they will vote now we can see a substantial wedge don't know or aren't sure if they will. While Tony Blair was Prime Minister the proportion of Labour voters staying loyal was only just above 50% (if that sounds low, remember again that the chances are not all these people really voted Labour), with a big wedge of former Labour voters defecting to the Conservatives, Lib Dems and others. There is an obvious step change at the point when Gordon Brown takes over as PM: since Brown became Prime Minister he has attracted back a significant proportion of those disloyal Labour voters, putting Labour's vote retention back into the region of 60%. However, having been split between Lib Dems, Conservatives and others, in the three months since then though the remaining 'disloyal' Labour voters have coalesced around the Conservatives.
Finally we come to the Lib Dems. Whereas with those people who said they voted Labour in 2005 probably includes people who didn't, people tend to under-remember voting Lib Dem - this sample probably misses out many Lib Dems. Looking at the graph the Lib Dems are only retaining around half of those people who claim to have voted Lib Dem in 2005, and since Gordon Brown became leader that has fallen further, now down into the low 40s. The interesting bit is looking at the group of former Lib Dem voters now backing other parties. This was around 18% or so of 2005 Lib Dem voters when Blair was PM, and they were mostly backing the Tories. It's grown since then to almost a quarter, but those voters have been swinging about, first backing Labour and then moving back towards the Conservatives.
So looking at these breakdowns what can we tell? Firstly past conservative voters are solid. Past Labour voters swung back to Labour after Brown became leader, and that renewed support hasn't faded, Labour might be behind again in the polls but the past Labour supporters Brown won back haven't gone anywhere, they are still sticking with him. Unless that changes Labour aren't going back to the depths they experienced prior to Brown becoming PM. The movement and the recent Conservative recovery has all been amongst the floating voters who backed Labour or Lib Dem in 2005 but aren't anymore. Those former Labour voters have gathered behind the Tories in the last few months, 2005 Lib Dem voters looking for someone else to support have backed first Labour and then the Tories.
So back to the question of what happens if the Lib Dems recover, who will they take support from? Well, amongst past Lib Dem voters far more have defected to the Tories than Labour, if people came back in direct proportion to who they are backing now it would damage the Conservatives more. It doesn't necessarily work like that though - the people who have drifted away from the Lib Dems in the last few months may be more likely to come back, and they would appear to be more likely to be backing Labour. It may also depend up who the Lib Dems select- conventional wisdom is that Nick Clegg would be better at attracting Tory votes, Huhne better at attracting Labour votes. My own suspicion is that it probably doesn't make much difference where the Lib Dems are placed ideologically, it will be more important how successful the new leader is at getting media coverage and once again becoming part of the mainstream media agenda, rather than being rather sidelined as the Lib Dems seemed to be under Ming Campbell.
*Not all the figures are on ICM's tables, so I've assumed that the difference between the number of people who gave their likelihood of voting at 7 or above and the total of those who did give voting intentions is made up of don't knows and won't says. The proportions supporting each party would be much the same anyway.
