Alan Bown Constituency Polls – Great Grimsby & Dudley North

• New Polling in the 6th & 7th most marginal LAB/CON constituencies

• Conservatives not making headway, with UKIP challenging for second place or ahead

• 70% of UKIP vote is not from Conservative 2010 voters

• UKIP & Lib Dems outperforming Uniform National Swing, Tories under-performing

Great Grimsby / Dudley North Results

Sample size: 1076 total respondents (550 Great Grimsby / 526 Dudley North)

Fieldwork dates: 18-22 October (Great Grimsby) / 22-24 October (Dudley North)

Methodology: Survey was conducted by telephone. A combination of random digit dialling and some targeted lifestyle data for younger demographics was used.

Weighting: Data were weighted by age, sex and ward. Targets for weighting were derived from ONS 2011 Census data. Voting intention was further adjusted by a likelihood to vote weighting on a scale of 0-10.

Prompting: Voters were asked “If that general election were to be held tomorrow, which party do you think you would be most likely to vote for in your [Great Grimsby / Dudley North] constituency” with the responses “Labour”, “Conservative”, “Liberal Democrat”, “UKIP” prompted in a randomising order, followed by “or some other party”.

*National swing figures taken from UK Polling Report’s polling average last week (CON 32 / LAB 38 / LD 10 / UKIP 11)

As can be seen from the results, in these key Conservative target seats (Dudley and Grimsby are numbers 9 and 10 respectively on the list of “most winnable” seats for the Conservatives to win at the next election) the Conservative party is not only failing to make any headway against the Labour incumbents, but is heading in the opposite direction, towards being pushed into third place by UKIP.

In these key marginals the Conservative Party are behind what even their poor national polling picture would suggest. Based on a uniform swing from national polling results the Conservatives would expect to be on about 30% in such seats, down 4 points from 2010. In fact they are down nearly triple that Great Grimsby and Dudley North, by 11 points down on 23%.

UKIP however is significantly outperforming its projected figure from most national polls, up 15 points on 23%, above the 15% projected from national polling. The Liberal Democrats are also notably outperforming what the national swing would suggest, offering further hope for them that their picture is not as dire as some predict.

70% of UKIP Voters In These Seats Did Not Vote Conservative In 2010

UKIP’s support in these seats is not all or even mostly Conservative defectors however – only 30% of current UKIP voters in these areas were recorded as being people who voted Conservative in 2010 – 70% of their support is from other sources. 10% are coming from Labour voters and a significant proportion (around 20%) from people who were not recorded as having voted for any party in 2010.

Removing UKIP from the equation would not therefore succeed in restoring Conservative fortunes in these areas. If UKIP ceased to exist and all UKIP defectors from the other three main parties were returned to the parties they voted for in 2010 (an already implausible scenario given our South Thanet poll shows many would not consider returning to the Conservatives) the Conservatives would still be trailing by a huge margin as shown by the below figures:

Conservative – 34%

Labour – 52%

Liberal Democrat – 8%

The full data tables for both polls (and the combined data tables) can be found here.

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