Clacton polling: What does it say for Labour?

The date for the by-election in Clacton was confirmed this morning as Thursday, October 9th – not only the day after the Lib Dem conference finishes but also David Cameron’s birthday. The two polls so far in the constituency do not point to many happy returns for the Prime Minister, as the result appears to be a foregone conclusion. At the weekend, a Survation poll in the Mail on Sunday gave UKIP a 44% lead over the second place Tories. This afternoon, Lord Ashcroft’s polling gives UKIP a smaller, but still likely insurmountable, lead of 32%. This would see Douglas Carswell returned to office as UKIP’s first elected MP with 56% of the vote.

But what do the polls say for Labour?

Well, it’s not great news. In truth, a Labour insurgence was never really on the cards here: we may have won what was nominally the same seat in the 1997 and 2001 landslides, but they were the only occasions it has ever gone Labour. The loss in 2005 may have only been by 1,500 votes, but by the last election Carswell’s majority had grown to 12,000. The poll at the weekend showed Labour on a modest 13%, while today’s has us scoring a slightly better 16%. Comparatively, Labour polled 25% in 2010.

In the Survation poll, 16% of UKIP voters said that making Miliband PM increases the chance of them voting UKIP, while only 15% said it made the less likely. In Ashcroft’s polling, 23% of UKIP voters say they are dissatisfied with David Cameron and would prefer Ed Miliband to be PM. This would point to a large number of UKIP supporters who should be notionally open to voting Labour.

In fact, Ashcroft finds that 45% of Labour voters in 2010 say they are now backing UKIP.

Mark Wallace of Conservative Home is undoubtedly correct when he says that there is more evidence UKIP harms the Tories than Labour – they take 59% of the 2010 Tory vote here. But the idea that UKIP will simply split the Tory vote and therefore deliver Labour power (as many LabourList readers believe) is now so clearly patently untrue as to be laughable. If 45% of Labour voters are willing to back someone who until last Thursday was a Conservative simply because he’s changed his rosette, then there is clearly a problem here.

As Nigel Farage’s party head for an almost certain victory, we have to ask ourselves questions. What is it about the current Labour Party that means we are losing support in places like Clacton? Why are former Labour voters looking to UKIP? And why can we not even attract those who’d rather see Miliband in Number 10 than Cameron?