Exclusive survey results: Lib Dem members and The Independent Group Welcoming the creation of The Independent Group, positive about its impact on Brexit and politics, nervous about its impact on the Liberal Democrats and keen to see some sort of arrangement between the Lib Dems and TIG: those are the views of party members revealed in the latest Liberal Democrat Newswire survey. After removing non-members, duplicates and the like, just under 2,500 members took part in the survey, run using the same methodologies to protect against fake entries and to make the survey representative of members as I used for the survey that accurately predicted the outcome of the Lamb vs Farron leadership election (and more accurately than all but one other prediction). That said, I deliberately use the word “survey” rather than “opinion poll”. I’d treat this as much more reliable than asking 10 random Lib Dem members in the foyer of party conference, ringing up the dozen party activists in a TV producer’s contact list or a party member relying on what ‘everyone’ is saying in their Facebook feed. But it’s not quite in the same league as a full-on opinion survey. One important sign of the robustness of the findings: cutting the data by gender, length of party membership and level of activism finds the participants skewed towards long-standing male activists (hello people like me!). But the figures do not vary that much by any of these three criteria (length of membership, gender and level of activism). As solid data to re-weight the data across all three isn’t available, I have instead thrown in a few caveats below where there is a difference worth noting. With that, let us look at what members said. First up, party members like the creation of The Independent Group. Three quarters (76%) are more hopeful or much more hopeful about what will happen on Brexit as a result of its creation, and fractionally more are more hopeful about the future for British politics overall. But only a bit over half (56%) are more hopeful about what its creation means for the future of Liberal Democrat values, and that drops further to under a third (31%) being more hopeful about the future of the party specifically. In fact, slightly more are less hopeful (33%) about the future for the party as a result of the creation of The Independent Group. The hope for Britain but concerns about the party are reflected in the views on what TIG and the Lib Dems stand for. Two-thirds (66%) think TIG’s values are similar to their own, but that’s down on 97% who think the Lib Dem values are similar to their own. (If you’re one of the 3% who are a party member but don’t share the party’s values, I’d love to hear why you are a member – please do hit reply.) Newer members differ from long-standing members on the value questions. Amongst those who were members before the 2015 election, just under two-thirds (61%) say TIG’s values are similar to their own, whilst for those who have joined since the European referendum this rises to over three quarters (76%) – a difference which suggests that the true overall figure for the party is rather more than the two-thirds mentioned above given the skew in the data. As a result of these views on values, members want to see some sort of arrangement with TIG but not full-blown assimilation between the Lib Dems and TIG. Just over half (55%) think, “The Lib Dems should make an agreement with The Independent Group over Parliamentary by-election candidates, even if this means the Lib Dems not standing in all of them”. That rises to two thirds (65%) amongst members who have joined since the European referendum. A further quarter of all members (23%) want some sort of arrangement but without withdrawing any candidates. Similarly, looking at political arrangements more generally, just over half (51%) opt for preferring, “Lib Dems and The Independent Group forming a political alliance, including deals over candidates” with another one in seven (14%) wanting close cooperation without deals over candidates. It is worth noting that nearly a quarter (24%) want full on consummation with a new party being formed by TIG and the Lib Dems – and that rises to over a third (34%) amongst members who joined since the European referendum. As for what will happen, rather than what people want to happen, just over half think there will be a deal involving candidates (51%), one in five think there will be looser cooperation without a candidate deal (20%) and only a bit over one in twenty think there will be a merged party (7%). Newer members are only slightly more likely than long-standing members to think this is likely. That suggests that for all the differences between newer and longer-standing members, given that in the end their expectations are very similar, with good party leadership they should be able to be kept united. Especially as the sounds coming out of The Independent Group are not those of an organisation wanting a particularly close relationship with the Lib Dems, for the time being at least.