And the survey says… Many thanks to the 1,310 members who (after duplicates, spam and fake entries were removed) took part in the unofficial Liberal Democrat Newswire survey on the proposed reforms to the party set out by Vince Cable. The results have also been weighted to reflect the profile of the membership more closely (but the usual caveat applies that this is not a perfect process by any means). I didn’t ask about the principle of a registered supporters scheme as party research so far shows around a 3:1 majority in favour of this. Instead, I concentrated on more contentious issues. The key headline results here were: 43% of members support giving registered supporters a vote in leadership contests and 57% oppose it . Support is lowest amongst longest standing members, and increases amongst post-2015 members and also (although not included in the 1,310) amongst the non-member party supporters who also did the survey.

. Support is lowest amongst longest standing members, and increases amongst post-2015 members and also (although not included in the 1,310) amongst the non-member party supporters who also did the survey. If only members can vote for party leader, then only 36% want who can stand for leader restricted to MPs. 26% would extend it to any publicly elected Lib Dem and a further 38% to any Lib Dem member. That support for opening up who can stand changes if the electorate is not members but rather members and supporters – it switches to 40% thinking only MPs should be able to stand, 28% publicly elected Lib Dems and 31% any member. Either way, this shows strong support for expanding who can stand for leader. The other notable result which adds to what we already knew about party views is that although there is very strong support for registered supporters to be able to attend (but not vote at) federal and state party conferences, members think they should have to pay more to attend. I say notable because many people I’d chatted to previously assumed that any plan for supporters to be able to come to conferences would involve a cheaper registration rate for them. As it turns out, members think members should get the perk of a cheaper registration than non-members (something normal in many organisations of course). When it comes to the 12-month rule, which requires people to have been a member for 12 months before being able to be a Lib Dem candidate for various public posts such as for Westminster, I’ve decided the survey results are not very useful. Sorry! I only gave the options of 12 months versus no limit, and what’s come out from things like the official party consultation sessions I presented at is how many people want a number somewhere between the two. I forced a choice in the questions which people don’t want. So although the survey apparently showed strong support for the 12-month rule, and even to extend it to include local elections, in practice I think a better reading of party opinion is that people want something somewhere between the two extremes of zero and a year. It’s always fun reading through the comments people give to the open-ended questions. Not only for the occasional person who forgets they didn’t do the survey anonymously and then unloads ‘anonymous’ bile in their answers but also for the person (at least, I presume it is always the same person) who goes for giving a fake email address, ticks all the options for never to be contacted in any form by anyone and then puts a whole load of questions to me in their comments. Hello, whoever you are! More seriously, the comments this time highlighted two other major themes. First, many people expressed their puzzlement over why people might want to become registered supporters but not members. I covered that in last time’s LDN (and welcome new readers who will have missed that). You can read about it in the section titled, “Members and committed supporters: two different tribes” here. Second, fears of entryism are a significant concern. It’s why I’ve ended up viewing the best course of action as to launch a registered supporters scheme as soon as we can do it well, and then later have a debate about leadership voting rights and other rules changes at a conference. That will give a period of time in between to see how well different proposed measures to protect against entryism and fake sign-ups work (e.g. how well verifying sign-ups against the electoral register works – a process that would never be enough on its own but might be a useful part of a package of steps).