YouGov suggest Nick Clegg is set to be next Lib Dem leader
Mike Smithson at political betting is reporting the YouGov poll of Lib Dem members, due to be released by Sky News later on tonight, shows Nick Clegg leading Chris Huhne amongst the 678 Lib Dem members surveyed by 56% to 44%. When the poll was conducted 52% had already voted, 24% were as yet undecided.
Polls of party members can be tricky to do - they are hard to sample (there are no publically available lists of party members to ring up or email) and hard to weight, since no one really knows the demographic make up of the party memberships. If there is no real demographic division in support hat doesn't matter - for example, in the last Conservative leadership election YouGov's polls suggested that Cameron's lead over David Davis was much the same whether members were young or old, activist or armchair supporter. The record of polls of Lib Dem members in the past is hard to judge - YouGov overestimated Chris Huhne's support in their poll during the last contest and showed him ahead of Campbell, when in reality Campbell beat him by 13% on the first round. However, the poll was conducted several weeks before the end of the contest, so it is impossible to say whether Campbell simply picked up support and overtook Huhne in the final weeks, whether Lib Dem members on YouGov's panel were more likely to support Huhne or whether the survey (which included several questions prior to the ones on voting intention) has biased the sample in favour of Huhne.
Either way, since many members have already voted this poll should be close enough to give an idea of the final result and - if it is representative - it looks likely that Nick Clegg will be the next Lib Dem leader.
There is also a new ICM poll out tomorrow, presumably for either the Sunday Telegraph or the News of the World. No full figures yet, but it reportedly shows an 11 point Conservative lead, with the Tories on 41% and Labour on 30%. The last ICM poll had figures of CON 37%, LAB 31%, LDEM 21%, so this would suggest a significant increase in Conservative support and a drop in Labour support.
UPDATE: Another interesting finding from the poll, given that a hung Parliament is relatively likely next time round. 44% of Lib Dem members would oppose a coalition with the Tories under any circumstances; 26% would oppose a similar deal with Labour. I'm sure some Lib Dem readers will be able to tell me, but I have the perception from coalition wranglings in Wales and Scotland that the Lib Dem leadership need the approval of Lib Dem members to actually agree to any coalition deal. In the event of David Cameron being the largest party and trying to cut a deal with the Liberal Democrats, it looks like it would be very difficult for (presumably) Nick Clegg to win Lib Dem members approval for all deal he secured.
UPDATE 2: Over at Lib Dem Voice they are pondering whether the polls's sample is too young. YouGov's weighted figures had 35% of Lib Dem members under the age of 40, 32% between 40 and 60 and 33% over 60. Looking at the breaks in the table under 40s were far more likely to back Clegg than over 60s - Clegg has a 32 point lead amongst under 40, but is neck and neck with Huhne amongst over 60s.
As I mentioned above, polls of party members are tricky because there are no accurate demographic figures to weight to. I don't know where YouGov got their 35/32/33 figures from, but if they are incorrect it would skew the figures. In short, if Lib Dem members are actually older than that, the poll would have underestimated Huhne, if they are younger than that, it would have underestimated Clegg. Either way, Clegg will still be ahead, since even if the party was entirely over 60, which it isn't, Huhne could only manage to be equal with Clegg.
UPDATE 3: The YouGov target weights were based on comparing the age of Lib Dem members with the age of the panel as a whole - effectively giving Lib Dem members an average age of 51. The only academic study of party membership is that done by Seyd & Whiteley which was well over 10 years ago (I can't remember the exact date, it came out in several different volumes concentrating on the different parties) when they had an average age of 59. That age profile would have put Clegg 10 points ahead, rather than 12, so no great difference.
