The staging of leadership debates has produced vast amounts of comment and speculation. Mr Clegg appears to have gained the most, although the he had the least to loose from the debates.
Riding high in opinion polls, with some showing the Liberal Democrats more popular than Labour, Mr Clegg regularly appears on the front pages of newspapers, has hit the number one spot in ‘trending’ on Yahoo and is getting exposure that previous Lib Dem leaders could only dream of.
An excellent report in today’s Herald, which carried out a poll of Shepway voters, appears to show a ‘Clegg effect’, although it is not thought to be decisive.
Shepway Lib Dems have remarked on Mr Clegg’s strong performances on their website and are the only local party to publicise the debates on their website, perhaps an indicator of how wary other parties are of Mr Clegg's performances.
Senior Lib Dem Tim Prater stated to FUTS that ‘the Lib Dems are already about 10% up in the polls from the start of the campaign and averaging around 30%. If we got to 38-39% on polling day (which is less of a rise than we've already seen) then we'd be looking not just at a big gain in seats, but Lib Dems as the largest party.
‘And that would include Lynne Beaumont as the next MP for Folkestone and Hythe.
‘Is it going to happen? Don't know. But I do know I've been a Lib Dem Party member and activist for 19 years. Until a fortnight ago, there had been literally 3 or 4 national polls in total in that time that had the Lib Dems as anything but third, and never ONE during a General Election campaign.
‘In the last fortnight, we've been fairly consistently 2nd and within 3-4% of the Tories, and occasionally even ahead of them. I've never seen that before. Something has changed.’
In response to questions from FUTS, Conservative Damian Collins stated; ‘To be honest, we've not seem any real impact from the debates one way or the other.
‘Our campaigning data shows that our support remains at the levels we would hope for it to be, so there doesn't appear to be any evidence that people are switching. We also get a positive response out on the streets.
‘Conservative supporters will often tell us that they think David Cameron did very well and that this wasn't reported strongly enough in the media.
‘There is more scrutiny of Lib Dem 'policy' now as well. I have had people bringing up the issue of keeping trident, and saying they don't agree with the Lib Dem position of getting rid of it.’
The Herald report also has the Conservatives predicting a reduced majority of 9,000 votes, down from almost 12,000. This is put down to Michael Howard’s standing down and the effect of this on voters in the constituency.
Labour Leader Gordon Brown is arguably the least media savvy of the three main leaders, and is the only of the three not to have worked in Public Relations.
Labour Candidate Donald Worsley decried the debates as reducing politics to a ‘Beauty Contest’ but feels the impact will be minimal.
‘Talent shows thankfully do not hold the final sway on the Election outcome. Policies do and now the initial novelty is starting to wear off people on the doorstep and at the Hustings are beginning to ask about policies and seeing through the veneer of presentation.
‘Yes people mention the debates but then when they ask about the Labour Party's policies the debates are very quickly forgotten.’
Labour Leader Gordon Brown is arguably the least media savvy of the three main leaders, is the only of the three not to have worked in public relations and yesterday suffered arguably the worst gaffe of the campaign when he called an elderly voter ‘bigoted.’
Recent polls show the Liberal Democrats moving into second place behind the Conservative party, although the Liberal Democrats forming the next opposition party seems unlikely without reform of the ‘first past the post’ voting system.
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