More evidence that Lib Dem MPs can beat the opinion polls

It has been common, at least since Mike Thornton won the Eastleigh by-election, for Liberal Democrats to argue that those who say we will be all but wiped out at the next general election are mistaken. Never mind the opinion polls, our MPs are popular and good campaigners, so they have a sporting chance of keeping their seats.

More evidence for this view comes from the October issue of Total Politics.

The magazine asked the members of YouGov's online panel about their satisfaction with their own MP. The results were startling:

if you’re a Conservative and you have a Labour MP, you can be forgiven for being predisposed to being dissatisfied with what they’re doing, and vice versa. 

But Lib Dem MPs appear to be able to reach across that divide. Even among non-Lib Dem voters, Lib Dem MPs scored +7. Amongst Lib Dem-voting respondents who had a Lib Dem MP, the score was an astonishing +61. 

We need to be cautious here: once you cut the data in a normal-sized survey down to focus just on Lib Dem voters (of whom there are currently not many) and who have Lib Dem MPs (of whom there are even fewer), you’re soon down to very small numbers of respondents and large margins of error. 

Still, while all MPs do better among those who will vote for that party than those who won’t, Lib Dems appear to be able to connect with non-supporters in a way that neither Labour nor Conservative MPs can.

The poll also found that

the views of those who've contacted their local MP about that MP are almost entirely dependent on how satisfactory the contact was. This relationship holds true regardless of the party leanings of the constituent.