LabourList survey: Readers say Miliband is doing well (and back him on debates)

Last night the first round of the debates took place (if you can call Cameron and Miliband being interview separately a debate). On April 16th, Ed Miliband has agreed to appear in a “challenger’s debate” alongside the leaders of UKIP, the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru. This move has been criticised by many as it could be that Miliband will get attacked by these other party leaders. However, earlier in the week Maya Goodfellow made the case for him taking part.

What do LabourList readers this? 58% say it is a good idea, while 26% say it isn’t. 14% aren’t bothered either way and think it won’t have a negative or positive effect while 2% don’t know.

It now seems clear that Scotland determine the outcome of the election. Labour currently hold 41 of the 59 seats in Scotland, but polls suggest that the party could lose a huge proportion of these.

So we asked LabourList readers for their predictions. Given the uncertainty of this election, it’s no shock that the vote was incredibly split. Most people think that Labour will win 11-15 or 16-20 seats, with 18% respectively. Somewhere in this margin seems like a relatively fair estimate based on current polling. 14% are little more optimist and think Labour will win 21-25 seats and 12% have gone one step further, thinking Labour will manage to swing 26-30 seats. Either of these would be a good outcome for the party, considering how well their main rivals in Scotland – the SNP – are polling.

As we go further up the scale, the optimism dwindles away. 7% think Labour will win 31-35 seats, 2% think 36-40 and the same amount think they’ll win 46-50, while 1% think 41-45, 51-55 and 56-59 1% respectively. Only 8% don’t know.

Some are, however, predicting a catastrophic outcome for Labour in Scotland. 6% think the party will only win between 1-5 seats and 11% think winning 6-10 seats is most likely. Neither options are beyond the realms of possibility but it would spell an almost-complete wipe out of support for Labour in Scotland.

Finally, our rolling question. This week, we wanted to know how you think Ed Miliband is doing as Labour leader.

The results are good for the Labour leader – 64% think he’s doing well (24% said very good and 40% said good). 20% said Miliband was doing average, with only 10% saying poor and 6% said very poor. Activists are throwing their support behind the Labour leader as the campaign approaches crunch time.

714 LabourList readers took part in this week’s survey – thanks to everyone who voted