Labour gaining seats, but not votes, in increasingly safe Tory areas

The Conservatives are losing votes in yet more of their seats, new Lord Ashcroft polling finds – and while Labour aren’t taking full advantage, it does mean that we are on course to make further gains. Ashcroft is polling marginals with increasingly bigger Tory majorities with the aim to find the point at which the swing is not big enough to see Labour make gains. With Labour gaining nine of the 12 constituencies polled here, it suggests that the point has not been reached yet.

The seats Labour look set to gain are:

Bury North

Cannock Chase

City of Chester

Croydon Central

Erewash

Keighley

Northampton North

Wirral West

Worcester

The Tories, meanwhile, are currently on course to hold Blackpool North & Cleveleys, Kingswood and Loughborough.

While the fact that Labour are set to win so many seats is excellent news, and would put Labour as the largest party in the Commons, there are causes for concern here. Primarily, that Labour’s vote share is not growing by very much.

In only three seats (Bury North, Croydon Central and Northampton North) does the Labour vote look to have increased by 5% points or more, and in only one of those (Northampton North) does that exceed the loss in the Tory vote. There does not seem to be a correlation between Tories losing vote and Labour gaining them – and the same is true for the Lib Dems. Where the Tories and Lib Dems both lose lots of votes, UKIP appear to be the sole beneficiaries (for example, Keighley and Cannock Chase).

In three seats (Kingswood, Blackpool North & Cleveleys, and Cannock Chase), Labour are in fact losing votes. Two of those, unsurprisingly, are set to stay Tory, while Cannock Chase (where the current MP is retiring because of a Nazi stag do scandal) is becoming a three-way marginal with UKIP in second place.

This seems to suggest that lots of anti-Coalition votes are going to UKIP, rather than Labour. And that is harming us – where Labour are not on course to win, it does not appear to be because the Tory majorities are too big, it is because they are the seats with the smallest swing to Labour.