Ukip only 10 points behind Tories, latest poll shows

[dipsydoodle]

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have suffered a double blow as Nigel Farage's UK independence party soared to 17% in the latest Opinium/Observer poll, and a large majority of voters have said they believe coalition economic policies are harming the country.

Following its success in the Eastleigh byelection, where Ukip came second behind the Lib Dems, Farage's anti-EU party is up 4% on a fortnight ago, and now has more than double the support enjoyed by the Lib Dems, who are unchanged on 8%.

Labour has dipped by 2% to 39% – also a likely victim of the Ukip bounce – while the Tories are down by the same amount to 27%, one of their lowest ratings of recent years.

The personal ratings of the leaders of the three main parties in parliament have all dropped, with David Cameron's having fallen by 8 points in two weeks from -18% to -26%. That of Labour leader Ed Miliband has dropped 5 points in a fortnight to -20% while Nick Clegg's rating has crashed a further 7 points from -46% to an alarming -53%

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/mar/09/ukip-opinium-observer-opinion-poll

[xchrom]

1. can you tell us more about ukip? i'm not up to speed on them. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Sort of like the British equivalent of the Tea Party

but we should be careful about drawing too many parallels. The reason for the party being started in the 90s was to advocate leaving the EU; its support largely came from Conservative supporters who thought that the Tory leadership was too happy staying in. It's also anti-immigration - part of what they hate about the EU is that it means unrestricted entry to the UK from other EU countries, but they also campaign against immigration from elsewhere in the world. They have also, in general, been climate change deniers (I'm not sure if that extends to the supporters, but the leaders certainly were - they appointed the idiotic Christopher 'Lord' Monckton as their spokesman, before apparently deciding he was too loony even for them); and they are now positioning themselves as the largest party that opposes the proposed gay marriage law (though I don't think that will gain them many votes - the exit poll for the recent Eastleigh by-election showed the reasons people gave for voting UKIP were immigration, the EU, and almost nothing else).

Their electoral success has so far been almost entirely in European elections - they came second in the 2009 ones. But the rise in polls since the last general election has been notable. They have had relative success in by-elections for vacant seats - see eg http://www.democraticunderground.com/10883235 from a couple of weeks ago, where they went from nowhere in 2010 to second. While the 'winner takes all' nature of Westminster elections means they'll find it very hard to win many seats, it's possible they might win a few, by now; and they'll certainly be a problem for the Tories, by splitting the right wing vote.

It's hard to know if some of their support is racist; there's certainly an undercurrent of "don't trust foreigners" to the party. But they aren't openly racist, and try to disassociate themselves from the violence of the English Defence League, and from the British National Party.

[xchrom]

3. thanks! nt