During the 2015 general election campaign, I did some phone canvassing for the Lib Dems. It was the simpler end of this sort of thing, at least for me: I was calling local organisers to see what, if anything, they required from HQ. So, no need to pitch the party, just find out some practicalities. Or so I thought.
I was surprised at how many of the people I called – and recall, these were Lib Dem organisers at the last election, so people who actually not only canvassed for the party but organised other people to do so as well – said that they had not only left the party, but had joined UKIP. One guy in particular put it sort of beautifully: “I’ve joined the other side”. As if the Lib Dems and UKIP were the only parties in Great Britain.
And to someone like him, that was probably broadly true at the time. A very misunderstood portion of the electorate is the “none of the above” voter. This is someone who will simply vote for whatever party (or option on a referendum ballot) that will cause the maximum amount of disruption to the perceived establishment. Pre-2010, this went to the Lib Dems – in fact, the proportion of the Lib Dem vote in the first decade of this century that was “none of the above” has turned out to be phenomenal, probably about two-thirds of the party’s vote share. Then, it went to UKIP after the Coalition was formed. At the 2017 general election, it seems to have gone to Labour.
What’s so important about the “none of the above” crowd is that they are numerous enough to change elections and referendums in a decisive manner, and yet people are constantly attributing to this group motives it almost certainly does not have within its numbers to any appreciable degree. In 2015, they were probably decisive in allowing the Tories to get a majority and causing Labour to be so badly beaten; in 2016, they were almost certainly decisive in allowing Leave to win; in 2017, they allowed Labour to get 40% of the vote and pick up seats in an election they were thought sure to get crushed in.
Again, what motivates most of these voters does not seem to be any particular issue. Because of the swelling of UKIP numbers in the 2015 general election, the assumption was that this group was motivated primarily by Euroscepticism; 2016 seemed to confirm this. And yet they were happy to vote Labour in 2017, despite this seemingly making Brexit less likely, or at least, a hard Brexit less likely. Also, the Lib Dems hardly hid the fact that they were pro-European 2000-2010, so why did they vote Lib Dem back then if leaving Europe was the priority?
Obviously, I’m in danger of treating around 13% of the population as one great lump that all thinks the same things. They are obviously not. I’m simply saying that there seems to be a group of voters who are around 10-15% of the electorate who are motivated beyond anything else to cast their vote in a way designed to cause the most upheaval, regardless of any other issue. I don’t think anyone has considered this in enough depth as yet.
In hindsight, this election looks like a harbinger of things that to come:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1965569.stm
I am a none of the above voter. In the past twenty years I have voted at least once for a candidate from every main party except UKIP. I didn’t vote Lib Dem in 2015 because they campaigned negatively against the incumbent labour candidate. Instead I voted independent. I would have voted Lib Dem on policy but their behaviour at candidate level just looked cynical. I am fed up with cynical politics.
Nick –
I don’t think the Liberal voters you are talking about are voting for ‘upheaval’, they are simply floating voters in translt from A to C or C to A via the LibDems/ Greens/ UKIP/ non-voting, etc.
Back in the late 1940s/ early 1950s, the Conservative party spent a lot of time conducting opinion poll research into identifying the ‘Liberal voter’, who they were and what they wanted. This was of particular concern to Mr Churchill. The conclusion was that Liberal voter was much the same as the ‘average’ voter’: by addressing the concerns of the average floating voter, you addressed the concerns of the Liberal voter too.
That said, there is a streak of radicalism or rebelliousness in the contemporary LibDem voter in some parts of the country. A year or so ago, the former MP for North Devon, Nick Harvey, described his local LibDem vote as radical and anti-Tory, but also, crucially, as anti-metropolitan. This is a modern version of the old court vs. country party meme that has a long history in Britain. And so if you think Westminster is too remote and politically out of touch, why would you think Brussels was any different?
The trouble is, Liberal radicalism is of a different kind in other parts of the country – notably in the big cities and university towns, (as well as and among the party’s activist base), where majoring on matters like Europe, climate change and gender puts the party closer to the Green left ideologically than it does in the shire counties. This makes translating the competing radicalisms into a coherent Liberal whole – while keeping the voter base together – an enormously difficult and thankless task. Ask Nick Clegg.
The Liberal/Liberal Democrat vote can be considered as consisting of four tranches: core Liberals; anti-Tories, lending their support; anti-Labour lending their support; and what Nick Tyrone calls ‘none of the above? voters. I am not sure of the last term, but there is certainly a type who wants to have no association with the responsibilities of government altogether.
Very roughly these groups are of similar size. This means that the mere fact of Lib Dems forming any association with Labour or Conservatives automatically ensures that the Party loses at least half its support.
I do not think it is largely the case that the ‘anti’ vote is a vote for disruption, more it is a vote to evade any responsibility or association with the outcome. In Brexit, this has gone wrong on an epic scale, but it does elucidate why virtually no one wants to associate themselves with Brexit.
“This means that the mere fact of Lib Dems forming any association with Labour or Conservatives automatically ensures that the Party loses at least half its support.”
And if they behave as the Lib Dems did in coalition, they also alienate many of the “core liberals”!
The ‘core liberals’ will return, though (where else have they to go?). The rest won’t.
Three and a half years on from the coalition, the opinion polls still show very little sign of anyone returning.
Well, except the 10% of the population who comprise the ‘core liberals’. You know, the ones who really get excited about being part of the ‘legalise weed and prostitution and stay in the EU’ party.
Obviously what I mean when I refers to opinion polls is that the Lib Dems are currently on about 8% in the polls (average of the last month’s figures on ukpollingreport), compared with their 7.9% share of the vote when the coalition ended!
If – as you seemed to agree – they alienated “core liberals” while in coalition, they have not returned. Or if they have, an equal number of some other type of supporter has been lost.
Actually I just don’t think there are that many ‘core liberals’. I think about 10% of the population are ‘core liberals’ and that’s why the current Lib Dem poll ratings have a ceiling of about 10%.
(Also, I don’t think they alienated all that many ‘core liberals’ in coalition, because again, where else were they going to go? What else were they going to say on voting intention polls? A few of them might flip-flop to the Greens and back, I guess, but not a lot — we are, after all, talking about a most particularly wonky demographic, so you’d expect them to float less than almost anyone else: if they weren’t Greens before the coalition it’s because they had reasons not to be Greens.)
If they had genuine liberal principles, they might well say “none of the above”, if they thought the Lib Dems had acted against those principles in government. Wonks may not float so much as the uninterested, but I think they are also more likely to object strongly to things they don’t like. The party has continued to provide liberals with plenty to dislike since the coalition, including a leader who covertly did think gay sex was a sin (despite pretending he didn’t), and a pretty strong tendency towards centrist authoritarianism rather than real liberalism.