Lib Dems: It's been worse

Anthony WellsHead of European Political and Social Research
January 06, 2011, 10:20 PM GMT+0

Today's voting intention figures are Conservative 40%, Labour 41%, Liberal Democrats 10%.

Such are the Liberal Democrats' recent troubles that this 10% is actually their highest figure in our daily polling since early December, although it's far too early to suggest it heralds some sort of recovery. All polls are subject to a margin of error, so if the underlying level of Liberal Democrat support is actually about 9% it is perfectly normally to get some eights and some tens.

Several newspapers yesterday reported that the Liberal Democrats are at their lowest level of support ever. While this makes good headlines, it isn't actually true.

The Liberal Democrats were founded in 1988 through the merger of the Liberal party and the SDP, and in their first couple of years of existence some polls showed them as low as four or five percent, even worse than their present showing. Of course, while these headlines are wrong, it shouldn't distract from the reality that the Liberal Democrat support has collapsed since entering the Coalition.

See the survey details and full results here