Lord Ashcroft’s poll of specific marginal seats has resulted in some good news for The Green Party.
Writing on his findings the pollster commented:
“The swing to Labour would have been even greater had it not been for the Green Party, which has attracted around one in seven Lib Dem defectors in these seats since 2010. I found the Greens in second place on 20% in Norwich South, and third on 10% in Manchester Withington. Indeed for every two Lib Dem defectors switching to Labour, one has gone to the Greens.
The Greens’ performance suggests they may have been identified as the new non-of-the-above vote for former Lib Dems who dislike the coalition and do not want to back any of the established parties. In other words, they could perform the same function for younger urban voters that UKIP currently does among older voters in other parts of the country.
In Brighton Pavilion (whose figures are not included in the overall calculations for the Lib Dem-Lab marginals), I found Labour on 33%, just one point ahead of the Greens, who were up a point on the last election. The seat will evidently be closely contested but on this basis I would not be surprised to see Caroline Lucas holding on next year.”
Lord Ashcroft’s polling has consistently found the Green Party to be on 6-7% of the national vote share – a huge increase on their 1% vote share from 2010 and leaves them not only as the main contender for seats such as Brighton Pavilion and Norwich South but also realistically looking to keep their deposits in a number of seats across the country.
This polling follows strong performances in May’s elections where the Greens elected an additional MEP (and as such they proudly point out they now have treble the number of the Liberal Democrats MEPs) and beat the Lib Dems into in the total vote share – 1.2million voted for a Greens compared to for the Lib Dems 1.09million. The Greens also gained 23 additional councillors at the Local Elections and are now the official opposition in Liverpool, Norwich, Solihull and the London boroughs of Lewisham and Islington.
Things are looking up for Green politics in the UK.
UPDATE:
The good folk at Norwich Green Party just tweeted me to say:
@cliffordfleming @steve4319 @McrGreenParty In the most recent local election (looking at Nor South) we had 34.6% and Lab 34.9%. It's close.
— Norwich Green Party (@NorwichGreens) July 1, 2014
Hynd's Blog 