by Sunny Hundal

A year into the current government, Lord Ashcroft has done a detailed analysis of voters perceive the Conservative party and what is required for a majority (a vote share of around 40%) can be achieved in 2015.

It’s an impressive document that is worth dissecting; usefully, posted online. Here are some excerpts on the direction of travel Lord Ashcroft thinks Conservatives should take.



1. He thinks the Conservatives did well in reaching the core vote, but not well enough to go past that.

As the May local elections showed, Conservative support is holding up fairly well – quite an achievement given the action the government is taking on the deficit. But unlike most previous parties of government, today’s Tories must do more than just keep the voters that put them in power. We should be aiming to move beyond our 2010 share of 37 per cent to a level above 40 per cent that is usually needed for outright victory. Viewed from this perspective, the fact that the Conservatives are just about holding their own offers limited comfort.

He admits this coalition is easier for Labour:

On the other side of the equation, while the Conservatives struggle to piece together two fifths of the electorate, Labour’s core support plus left-leaning former Lib Dems could theoretically give Ed Miliband close to 40 per cent of the vote without needing to get out of bed.

2. While he finds that those who embraced the Conservatives were happy with the ways things were going, floating voters were less so:

First-timers whose view of the party had changed for the better since the election were all but matched by those who said it had worsened. The proportion wanting to see an outright Conservative victory next time, though still a majority, was lower than among Conservative voters as a whole. Only just over half said they would probably 8 vote for the party in 2015 (though a very high proportion said they didn’t know), well below the level for Conservative voters overall. The research also found a gender gap. Women were consistently and significantly less enthusiastic about the Conservative Party and the government’s performance, and more concerned about the cuts, than men.

3. ‘Tories only for rich people’ charge still sticks he says:

The biggest barrier, which was not overcome by election day and remains in place for most of them, is the perception (which Tories are sick of hearing about but is real nonetheless) that the Conservative Party is for the rich, not for people like them. As with Conservative voters, Considerers who had never voted Tory were more negative in their views than those who had done so in the past.

4. There are five main policy areas he focuses on. Obviously the main one is the economy, which deserves a post on its own. There is also a big focus on the NHS, which mostly says that people aren’t convinced by Cameron’s view thart the NHS needs to change. I’ll pick out that too later.

But there are three other areas Ashcroft thinks are key for Conservatives

Our research suggests that welfare reform is a striking political success story for the Conservatives. Public demand for changes to the welfare system has been clear for years, and certainly not just among Tories. We found that people grasped and strongly supported specific elements of the government’s plans, such as ensuring that people are better off in work than on benefits, and they recognised that these plans are being implemented. In our segmentation analysis, agreement that the Conservatives have the best approach to welfare emerged as one of the factors most closely correlated with Conservative voting intention. Immigration is a less clear cut success. Again, many people strongly supported Conservative plans, which they remembered from the election campaign, to restrict immigration from outside the EU (though they often lament the immigration from within the EU is the bigger problem), and to establish a Border Police force. It was very much less clear to them, though, exactly what had been done in the last year, prompting many to wonder whether any government will take the issue seriously. As I have written more than once before, the Conservatives do not need to push immigration further up their political agenda, since we have a big lead on the issue and people are more worried about our commitment in other areas – but we do need to show we are delivering on our promises. Crime represents a Conservative coalition-building opportunity that is currently being missed. As my research report, Crime, Punishment & The People showed earlier this year, a firm approach to law and order is the very essence of the centre ground. One of the things people expected from a Conservative-led government, whether they voted for it or not, was a tough approach to crime, but so far they have been disappointed. Asked what the government was doing on the issue, previously one of the Conservative Party’s strongest suits, most people thought only of police cuts – with some adding that they had heard we want to send fewer criminals to prison.

Opponents of Welfare reform have little to cheer here unfortunately – not only will the Tories push ahead strongly on the issue, but a lot of the public is on side. It’ll be very difficult to push back on Welfare changes. I suspect this is mostly why Labour isn’t saying much, other than opposing some specific measures.

5. Lastly, he argues against triangulation

Our complex segmentation analysis has actually revealed that the things that will build and maintain the Conservative voting coalition are the economy, David Cameron, welfare, crime, the NHS, and a demonstration that the Conservative Party shares people’s values. These are fundamentally mainstream concerns that have the potential to expand the Conservative voting coalition and delight longstanding Tories at one and the same time. In other words, attracting new voters need not alienate existing supporters, and we do not have to pursue a separate agenda for each segment of voters. There is no need to engage in elaborate and slippery triangulation.

“Project Blueprint” is here. Its worth taking seriously to predict future Tory direction and identify their weak points.