C + Investigations undertook a poll of 1071 students from across the University to find out students’ voting intentions in next week’s General Election. Of those, 1017 told C+ both their college and expressed a voting preference. 725 expressed an intention to vote in either the Oxford East or Oxford West & Abingdon constituency, whilst 237 respondents said that they were going to vote in their home constituency. Some results may be skewed due to an unequal distribution of respondents over colleges. For rankings between colleges, those with low response rates were excluded.

Who are you planning to vote for?

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What are the top priorities for Oxford students voting for the Conservatives or Labour?

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What is the most important issue for you in the General Election?

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Tom Robinson provides a breakdown of Cherwell’s survey on voter intentions

Labour has come out top in a University-wide poll of students’ voting intentions. 31.6 per cent of students intend to vote for the party, while support for David Cameron and the Conservatives came in at only 24.2 per cent. The poll suggests that the voting intentions of Oxford students are at odds with those of the general public, with the BBC’s poll of polls (as of Monday of First Week) putting the Conservatives one point ahead of Labour on 34 per cent. Oxford students in contrast appear to favour Labour considerably.

However, of those respondents intending to vote in Oxford West and Abingdon, support for the Labour Party was only 25 per cent (versus 31.4 per cent in Oxford East), whereas the Conservative Party came out on top at 29 per cent (versus 20.3 per cent in Oxford East). Liberal Democrat support was also more pronounced in Oxford West and Abingdon than in Oxford East, at 19 per cent versus 11 per cent.

Variation across the two constituencies may be explained by the fact that both Oxford seats are considered fairly safe for the Conservative and Labour parties respectively. Students may therefore be engaging in tactical voting, choosing to vote in more marginal seats back in their home constituencies. Oxford West and Abingdon is considered a relatively safe bet for the Conservative Party’s Nicola Blackwood and Oxford East has returned the Labour Party’s Andrew Smith since 1987. It is likely that many Labour-supporting students residing in Oxford West and Abingdon intend to vote elsewhere. 

Unsurprisingly, support for the Green Party was strong amongst the student population, with 15 per cent of responses indicating an intention to vote for Natalie Bennett’s party next Thursday. After excluding colleges with low response rates, Wadham College expressed the highest proportion of support for the Greens, with 28% of students there intending to vote for the party.

UKIP underperformed national polling, with the party only receiving 4.1 per cent of student support. On the other hand the Liberal Democrats, some of whose MPs voted for tuition fee rises despite pledging not to, outperformed national polls by two per cent. A further 8.7 per cent of students remained undecided at the time of the survey but only 0.5 per cent said they did not intend to cast a vote. The most undecided colleges were Mansfield, Oriel and Regent’s Park, though low response numbers across some colleges may skew these results.

Social issues dominated the most important policy areas for students in the run up to the election. Welfare policy came out as the most important issue with 23.8 per cent of respondents deeming it the most important issue. The NHS came in second place with 16.6 per cent. Government borrowing was the third most highlighted policy at 11.4 per cent.Within support for the two
main parties, those expressing a preference for the Conservative Party were much more likely to highlight government borrowing or jobs as their most important issue whereas Labour voters favoured social welfare and the NHS. Undermining fears that new electoral registration laws may deter students from voting, only 2 per cent of respondents had not registered to
vote.

Have colleges earned their stereotypes? C+ looks at some of the more light-hearted findings of the General Election survey

Even less surprising than the level of support for the Greens in a student survey was the responses of a few students who wished to express their rather ‘unique’ voting intentions. For one survey respondent, the answer is
clear: vote for the First Galactic Empire to secure a brighter future for all by tackling the most important issue of all, “Jedi scum”.Another particularly inspired student suggests we eschew the norm of voting for humans and instead choose Princess Celestia, an Alicorn pony and co-ruler of Equestria.

More seriously, Wadham can breathe easy knowing that over 63 per cent of the college voted for either the Greens or Labour, and had the joint-lowest proportion of Conservative voters of all Oxford colleges at 8 per cent, alongside Mansfield. With only 40 per cent of Balliol respondents choosing Ed Miliband’s party, the College may need to worry that their reputation as the heartland of Labour support has come under fire.

St Hilda’s, Pembroke, Mansfield, and Hertford each had a higher proportion of Labour voters than the supposed bastion of The Red Flag (49, 44, 62, and 58 per cent respectively).

The Conservative Party was the most favoured party of 14 colleges, with a particularly high proportion of student support at St John’s, Christ Church, Somerville and the alma mater of leader David Cameron, Brasenose.

Labour – Madalena Leao

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The Labour party is promising to double the rate of house building by 2020. However, fewer council homes were built under New Labour than under Thatcher. How can students trust your party?

Between 1997 and 2010, the Labour party didn’t build enough houses, social or private. It built 2.61 million new homes (compared to Thatcher’s 2.63 million). It prioritised private housing over social, a trend that was started by John Major, who presided over a flatlining in the number of council houses built.

This can be partly explained by the fact that Labour faced a huge number of challenges when it came to power in 1997. In the 13 years it had in charge, the party improved the lives of workers by introducing a national minimum wage. It transformed state schools by hiring over 42,000 new teachers and over 210,000 teaching assistants and special educational needs assistants. This led to the proportion of schools who had less than 30 per cent of their students receiving five good GCSEs falling from 50 per cent to under one per cent. It brought in laws that put Britain on its way to stamping out discrimination, and took the steps that made the legalisation of gay marriage possible and more.

And although the Decent Homes Programme was set up to put £20bn towards making sure British homes were safe, warm, modern, and watertight, it’s clear that part of the reason why house building wasn’t up to scratch is because (rightly or wrongly) it fell down the list of priorities of a party facing a mountainous number of tasks. 

But when the coalition got into government in 2010, they had the perfect opportunity to find a solution to the housing crisis. Not only had the lack (social and private) of housing become a recognised problem by then, but building projects could have provided a path to higher rates of employment and the backbone to economic recovery following the global financial crisis. 
Instead, they punished the disabled through the bedroom tax, increased non-progressive taxes like VAT, and reorganised the NHS from the top-down; building only 137,000 houses a year (the lowest levels of house building since the 1920s), when 300,000 were needed.

We can trust a Labour government to deliver where the Tories refused for two simple reasons. Firstly, it is top of Miliband’s agenda. In his conference speech last year, he made it his “top priority” and the policy of doubling house building has been widely publicised.

Secondly, Miliband is not Blair or Brown. He’s proven (by standing up to Murdoch, the government, the city of London, and recently even Jeremy Paxman) that he’s not afraid to shake things up. He’ll force banks to invest in housing and push his government to put great effort into doubling the number of homes Britain builds.

Liberal Democrats – Syed Imam

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Before the last election the Liberal Democrats promised not to raise tuition fees; they were then raised, while education expenditure has seen serious cuts. Why should students trust you?

The Liberal Democrats messed up on tuition fees, and they messed up big. As a result, students are rightfully questioning whether they should consider voting Lib Dem this time round, but here’s why they still definitely should.
Allow me to explain what we did deliver on tuition fees. We created what is essentially a graduate tax; if people with a university education are more likely to get a job and command a far higher salary than those without a degree, it makes sense that they pay back a larger share than those who don’t.

Getting a degree is still completely free at the point of use and it is only fair that some of the cost is paid back by those who are now better off as a result so as to allow the next generation to prosper equally. It is a ridiculous concept to make people without degrees pay for those who are wealthier and do have them. The dustman shouldn’t be paying for the doctor. Fairer still is the system of repayment; you only start paying this ‘graduate tax’ once you are earning more than £21,000 a year (someone without a degree on average earns only £17,800) and if you lose your job or earn less than £21,000, you pay nothing at all. As a result of all this, more students are applying than ever before, and there are more applications by disadvantaged and BAME students.

If you are angry that higher education fees are even on the table of budgeting discussion, please, be angry at the Labour Party who introduced, then trebled, fees while each time promising not to, despite having total control in a majority government and a booming economy.

So why should students trust us?

The past five years have not been easy. There has been a democratic compromise where we have worked with a party with values very different to ours. Yet we have successfully implemented 75 per cent of our manifesto, in the face of Tory pressure and with only 8 per cent of MPs in parliament. You can trust us when we say we will cut taxes for millions of working people because that is what we have done every year for the past five years. You can trust us when we say we will fight for LGBTQ+ rights because that is what we have done, making same-sex marriage legal in 2013.

You can trust us when we say we will invest in education because we have protected schools’ funding and created the Pupil Premium, benefiting the poorest schoolchildren. You can trust us when we say we will greatly increase funding for mental health issues, because that is what we have done, and we have pledged £3.5 billion more. This is a strong record, with a promise of more, to create a fairer, more prosperous society.

Conservatives – Jan Nedvidek

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In power, the Conservative-led government has overseen tuition fee rises and cuts to the education budget. If your party were to be elected, your leader has stated that education spending will not rise with inflation. Why should students trust you?

So many people support ‘free education’, and it is just so easy to fall in for that phrase. Of course we all want education to be free. However, we live in a world where things are not free, and like healthcare or housing, education costs money. Someone has got to pay for it.

I think it is only fair that those who benefit from tertiary education the most – us, university students – should be asked to contribute towards the cost of our education. If I don’t pay, someone else will have to: what’s ‘fairer’ about a worker in the opposite corner of the country paying for my degree through his or her taxes? What’s ‘fairer’ about borrowing more money so that my grandchildren pay for my degree?

And let us please stop this narrative of how the fees are putting people off applying. The number of people applying to universities keeps growing. 
The extra money in the system has enabled universities to create new bursaries and scholarships, meaning that more money that ever before is being spent of helping students from poorer backgrounds.

I don’t think I need to convince people to trust us: as the governing party; we have a record to defend, so let people judge the Tories by the government’s results, not by my articles.

I am fundamentally convinced it is a good record: according to polls, support for the Conservative Party has doubled (!) among 18-24 year olds since the last election, and there is probably a reason for that.

After we graduate, we will all need a job. And guess what: we will be fine with our shiny Oxford degrees (or a very average 2.1 in my case), but not everyone in this country will. Unemployment statistics are not empty numbers. They tell you that five years ago, there were 2.5m individuals who could not work, despite the fact they wanted to and had the right skills. The UK has created more jobs since 2010 then the rest of the EU put together ; Yorkshire has created more jobs than the whole of France. This is a record I’m happy and proud to defend.

I understand that voting Tory isn’t very sexy. I’m convinced, though, that the Tories offer the most competence on the economy and the strongest leadership . On a personal note: I’m glad Cameron was the first PM ever to push through legislation which now allows me to get married. 
I want to live in a country which works and lives within its means, and I think I have the best shot by voting Conservative.

Green Party – David Thomas, Green councillor

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Support for the Green Party is disproportionately high among students. Yet, many find your party’s nuclear stance irrational, while some see your promises as unrealistic. Why should students trust you?

Can the Greens be trusted with your vote at this year’s General Election? Voting – I expect for most of you it will be your first time – is a big decision and nobody wants to throw it away on a party that can’t be trusted to think straight or act responsibly.

Take nuclear power as an example. At first glance, nuclear power appears to be a no-brainer – energy with no carbon emissions! What on earth then are the Greens up to when we say “no to nuclear”? Aren’t we being a little self-indulgent? Trying to have our cake and eat it? The answer is really very simple – we just don’t think you need nuclear energy. Instead, we believe the answer lies in a massive frontal attack on energy efficiency – such as insulating our homes – and getting proven renewable technologies such as solar and wind to generate the lion’s share of the remaining demand.

But why try to avoid nuclear in the first place? Firstly, managing the waste products of nuclear fission passes an unacceptable burden and risk onto future generations. Secondly, it’s not at all clear that nuclear power is all that low in terms of carbon emissions once one takes into account plant construction, ore extraction and transportation: it’s obviously streets head of burning coal, but is probably no better than solar and wind. I realise that, for some, neither of these concerns may seem like show-stoppers. However, the wheels really start to come off when you look at the finances. Constructing nuclear power plants requires vast sums of taxpayer subsidy, and the eventual cost of the power they produce is extremely high. Nuclear is simply not good value for money. In a sense, nuclear power is a distraction from the main practical challenges ahead of us – reducing energy demand and de-carbonising energy generation. In our manifesto we have pledged to insulate nine million homes (in the process creating 100,000 jobs and lifting millions out of fuel poverty), decommission all UK coal fired power stations by 2023, and invest £35bn to bring on-line the renewables we need to stop catastrophic climate change.

Nuclear power is just one example from many where the Greens can be trusted to deliver a common good, not just benefits for the few. Others include a £10/hr living wage, an end to right-to buy, an end of austerity, and an end of NHS privatisation. And of course, when we say we won’t ever do a deal with the Conservatives, you can bank on it.
If you believe in what the Greens represent and stand for, I urge you to vote Green­. You won’t let in the Tories and you’ll be showing Labour their brand of Tory Lite is not enough.

UKIP – Max Jewell

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Lots of people find your strong anti-immigration rhetoric worrying. Many also worry about potential job losses if the country were to leave the EU. Why should students trust you?

UKIP are not anti-immigration. There has been an unhelpful, and possibly deliberate, conflation of opposition to immigration and opposition to mass immigration. That modern economies benefit from some immigration is almost beyond doubt. Indeed, I know of nobody in UKIP who is arguing for zero migration. Moreover, there is a widespread perception that UKIP’s opposition to mass immigration is based on little more than reactionary racism, a kind of saloon bar bigotry. Former OUSU President Tom Rutland, for instance, has claimed that there is a vein of racism that “runs through the party”. International students may quite legitimately fear such a party. Yet this isn’t UKIP.

We are chiefly concerned about the sheer scale of immigration in recent years. We are concerned that recent migratory trends have compressed wages, a view supported by a number of economists in the House of Commons Treasury Committee report on the Autumn Statement. We note that immigration has greatly increased housing demands.

We argue, as the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee has done, that there is “no systematic empirical evidence to suggest that net immigration creates significant dynamic benefits for the resident population in the UK”. Such concerns are legitimate, and shared by 74 per cent of the population who want to see immigration reduced, and ought not to cause distress to international students, nor should they be dismissed by an out of touch elite drunk on a sense of superiority.

UKIP hasn’t attempted to hide its desire to leave the European Union. It has been argued that secession from the European Union will cost Britain, including its young citizens, jobs. Three million, if the Liberal Democrats are to be believed. Yet the danger has likely been overstated. The NIESR, who authored the claim, also wrote, “There is no a priori reason to suppose that many of these [jobs], if any, would be lost permanently if Britain were to leave the EU.”
Moreover, an Ernst and Young ‘UK Attractiveness Survey’ found that although “56 per cent of investors in Western Europe feel that if the UK were less integrated into the EU, it would become less attractive for FDI, […] 72 per cent of US and two-thirds of Asian investors believe that a looser relationship with the EU would actually make the UK more attractive.” The two year period between the declaration that Britain intends to leave the EU and the event would doubtless be more than enough time for business to adjust.
We want an amicable divorce from political union. There is nothing wrong with that.

Disgruntled voters – Luke Barratt

I still don’t know if I’ll vote or not. I’m uninspired by the choices available, repulsed by the governmental system as a whole, and disgusted by the meaningless nature of my vote in a first past the post system and the undermining of democracy that it represents.

I could vote tactically, for Layla Moran, to get the Conservatives out, recognising the value in real terms of the hair whose breadth splits the two main parties. Many people in the UK – disabled people for example – will suffer slightly less under a coalition government than they would under a Tory government. But can I really sacrifice my beliefs, voting to enable the accession of one group of out-of-touch public schoolboys who care more about their second homes – let alone their second kitchens – than the welfare of the electorate?

Besides, who knows what it would accomplish? The endless coalition permutations of a hung parliament mean that I could never be sure who I was voting into Westminster. My vote would be a disingenuous shout of support to much that I despise, arguing in a room I don’t think should even exist.
I could just vote for the party I hate the least. In my case, this would be the Greens. They have some great policies, and represent the only voice crying anti-austerity in a cacophony of fiscal conservatism. But at the same time, their lack of diversity is disconcerting, and from brain fades to bin collections, they haven’t exactly shown much competence in the last few years. What’s more, a vote for the Greens is essentially a vote wasted, unless you live in Brighton.

If the reward for my complicity in an election rigged in favour of the status quo is nothing more than the unquantified and uncertain promise of a slight shift to the left from those eternal non-performers, Labour, how have I done justice to the disenfranchised? My vote would be a single voice – shut out of the house – screaming into the darkness, unheard.

Or, I could not vote. As soon as I contemplate refusing to take part in our broken electoral system, I feel as if a great weight has been lifted. Yes, I won’t have any say in who wins my seat, and therefore the General Election, but that would be the case for option two, anyway.

Perhaps, I think, in the tiny optimistic core of my mind, not voting is the most powerful demand for electoral reform I can make. Perhaps I’m voting for proportional representation. There are those who would argue that I should spoil my ballot, that my opinion is provided for in the current system, but I disagree.

As soon as I’ve put pen to paper in the polling station, I’ve consented to participation in this election. And I do not consent. I don’t agree with the rules that are forced upon us, and I don’t want to pretend that I do. My voice will join all the other angry dissenters. We stand in a huge crowd, murmuring discontentedly, larger than any party’s voter base, and far from silent.

In a seat which has been Labour for a decade longer than the average Oxford fresher has been alive, you might think that a victory for incumbent Andrew Smith was all but assured. Nonetheless, things aren’t all that straightforward in Oxford East.

Smith’s majority had shrunk progressively since Labour won the seat in 1997 with a 34 per cent majority, and he only held on in 2005 by under a thousand votes. However, in the last election, Labour increased their share of the vote, winning by 8.9 per cent; this might sound unassailable compared to the extremely tight race that is taking place up past St Giles in Oxford West & Abingdon, but in fact, according to voterpower.org.uk, a vote in Oxford East is worth 1.4 times the UK average.

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Oxford East’s boundaries stretch through the centre of Oxford, splitting University Parks and dividing the city along Keble Road and Little Clarendon Street, before turning south along Walton Street. As a result, the catchment area includes most Oxford colleges, Brookes, Cowley, Marston, Headington, and Blackbird Leys. Students and residents of traditionally working class Cowley account for the strong Labour presence here; the Lib Dems used to contest this seat closely, as they are in Oxford West and Abingdon, but doubtless they will do poorly on polling day despite charismatic candidate (and, incidentally, Cherwell alumnus) Alasdair Murray. As might be expected, the Left will do strongly amongst students in Oxford East, with Labour and the Greens taking over 60 per cent of the vote between them in our poll.

As for the main issues, Oxford’s housing crisis will be at the forefront of all the candidates’ minds, with the city named recently as the least affordable place to live in the UK (London and Cambridge came second and third respectively). Alongside this, student fees will doubtless play a part in swaying the votes of students at both Oxford universities, whilst social issues remain a major issue for everyone, predominantly homelessness and the NHS.

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Oxford East’s varied social make-up is reflected in its numerous candidates, including eccentric local figure Artwell, an independent, and the Monster Raving Loony Party’s Mad Hatter, aka Alasdair de Voil.

The seat also boasts a smorgasbord of leftist candidates, with the Socialist Party and the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) standing alongside the more mainstream Green candidate. As for the Right, controversial UKIP candidate and outspoken critic of LGBTQ+ rights Julia Gasper has been replaced by the younger Ian MacDonald.

The incumbent: Andrew Smith, Labour 

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Andrew Smith has been the Member of Parliament for Oxford East since 1987. He still resides in Blackbird Leys in south-east Oxford, but in 2009 was found to have claimed over £34,000 in parliamentary expenses for renovations on his second residence in Kennington, south Longon, between 2004 and 2008. Smith has held two Cabinet positions, including Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2002-4.

In parliament, Smith generally votes along party lines, but has been known to rebel against Labour whips, such as in his rejection of renewing Trident (one of 19 to do so) and his vote in favour of an EU referendum. In accordance with Labour policy, he voted against the reduction of social housing allowance on those with spare bedrooms (the ‘bedroom tax’), against increasing VAT, in favour of banning fox hunting and in favour of the mansion tax, as well as in favour of the 2012 rise in student fees.

Unfortunately, due to family reasons Andrew Smith was unable to speak to Cherwell, but Oxford University Lavour Club Co-Chair Madalena Leao says of him, “Andrew Smith ahs represented the people of Oxford East since 1987 working hard for students, He supports the Labour cut in tuition fees to £6000. He has a strong track record in supporting young people, working in the past to bring in Labour’s New Deal to reduce youth unemployment. He will also work for a greener, more peaceful future, voting not to renew Trident.

Melanie Magee, Conservatives

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The former mayor of Bicester and current Vice Chairwoman of Cherwell District Council, Melanie Magee is no stranger to local politics. She names her main targets as reducing local youth unemployment by increasing the uptake of apprenticeships and trainee­ships and addressing crime rates in Oxford East.

Macgee told Cherwell, “I will continue to engage with all residents, using my working knowl­edge of the area gained through work in the our local NHS, the private sector and education sector. I will use the experience of my own background and achievement having been born on a council estate in a multicultural inner city bullied as a child, and later as a single mum in my early 20s. Despite life’s early challenge, I aspired to achieve and became a Councillor supporting the community in Bicester, I was elected as Mayor in 2013, and Vice Chairman of Cherwell District Council in 2014. I am committed to the community.”

Magee has lived in Bicester for 14 years with husband David and daughter Dannie.

Alasdair Murry, Lib Dems

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The albatross of student fees hangs heavily around the neck of any Lib Dem candidate in a seat where there is a large student body, and Alasdair Murray’s chances will doubtless have taken a hit as a result. Speaking about what he called “the elephant in the room”, Murray told Cherwell, “I’m not going to defend the decision to run the 2010 campaign on tuition fees. I felt at the time it was unsustainable; that was proved right. The party leadership felt otherwise and it made a mistake, and is still paying for that mistake now.”

In a move that may win back many an Oxford student, Murray has made the improvement of local mental health care a central part of his manifesto, as well as solving the housing crisis in Oxford. Murray said, “In the last two elections, the Liberal Democrats have run Labour very close. There is a huge demographic change going on which means that Labour certainly can’t take it for granted any more.”

Mr Murray lives in east Oxford with his wife and two children. Before turning to politics, he worked on a national newspaper and for two British think tanks. He replaced the original Lib Dem candidate, Mark Mann, who stepped down for family reasons.

And the rest…

The three ‘main’ par­ties – if they can be called that following the transition into the mainstream of both UKIP and the Green Party – are by no means the only options in a seat which is contested by a total of nine candidates.

A nemesis of the local council after he and other tour guides took issue with regulations on advertising, the Mad Hatter was born Alasdair de Voil in Scotland, before moving to Oxford to teach. Despite jokey policies like an endorsement of Louis Trup’s monorail plans, he raises a number of valid points, nam­ing the housing crisis as the most important issue in Oxford, and offering a mission statement of engaging young people in politics as well as offering voters a safe protest vote.

The Mad Hatter told Cherwell, “The Monster Raving Loony Party means different things to different people. Some people who vote for them tend to be cynics. If you’re like me, then you’re just so fed up with having been promised the same old thing by mainstream parties, and I want to stand up and use humour to shine a light on the issue.

“It takes being angry with something to stand as a candidate, not just a joke.”

Nor should Green candidate Ann Duncan be taken too lightly; she is after all someone who can boast of working for both the World Bank and the Department for International Development. On top of national Green Party policies, Duncan is a prominent champion of the campaign to protect Port Meadow from the University’s Roger Dudham Way development, as well as to regulate new building projects such as Diamond Place in Summertown. The Greens have also pledged to improve cycle paths throughout Oxford, in an assurance that will appeal to students all too familiar with the treacherous pot holes and meagre cycle paths of the city centre.

UKIP, meanwhile, have replaced 2010 candidate Julia Gasper with the far less controversial Ian MacDonald. MacDonald raised £250 of his £500 election deposit through small crowdfunding donations, and may do better than one might expect in a seat as multicultural and student-heavy as Oxford East. MacDonald has taken up the cause of a number of local issues, including opposition to the development of green space near the site of Barton Park, an upcoming construction project aimed at providing Oxford with 885 new homes.

Both the Socialist Party and Trade Unionist and Socialist Alliance (TUSC) have put for­ward candidates in Oxford East for the first time, so options for the Far Left are unusu­ally varied for those so inclined. However, the most anti-establishment might come in the form of a local campaigner, the mononymous Artwell. Having campaigned against the closure of Temple Cowley Pools, he caused controversy by refusing to remove a golliwog rom his outfit when talking to the BBC in January. Artwell’s aim is to “Save England from austerity…from industry using the environment as a place to dump its dirty waste; to stop English involvement in many Arabic wars and war spending.” Artwell is also decidedly against austerity, stating, “Vote for me, Artwell, to free the Treasury from the control of the banks, for the benefit of this nation.”

As with any election, the one on 7th May is about lots of different issues and
different things for different people. The factors that will affect the outcome are more numerous and varied still. Nonetheless, many commentators are afflicted by a chronic temptation to try to define what particular elections are really all about.

Two main themes stand out this time: the economy and nationalism. The economic contest is between ideological positions on the size and role of the state as well as over competence in macro-economic management. For nationalism, the relationships between Scotland and the UK and between the UK and EU are the main issues.

Economic and national identity issues are often thought of rather separately, but they are linked when it comes to understanding both changes in party support and the choice of government.

The UK, some argue, faces a choice between a left-wing government dependent on nationalist support from Scotland (and perhaps also Wales and Northern Ireland), and a right-wing unionist government with elements of Euroscepticism. But while Scottish independence and EU membership will almost certainly depend on further referendums which may or may not be called, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimates that UK government debt will be a massive £90bn higher by 2019/20 under Labour plans than Conservative ones. So the economic issues, including funding of public services, are arguably paramount.

The misfortune of the Liberal Democrats, for a start, has little to do with nationalism but a lot do with economic issues. The 2010 election led to the Liberal Democrats joining the Conservatives to form the first post-war coalition government, ostensibly to ensure that Britain had strong and stable government to deal with the economic crisis. No good deed goes unpunished, as they say. Liberal Democrat support collapsed from 24 per cent at the election in May to around 10 per cent in the polls in December 2010, as their relatively left-wing former supporters moved to Labour.

The Liberal Democrats have basically flat-lined since then. Neither the Tories nor Lib Dems have been rewarded for the recent upturn in headline economic growth and employment.

This may be partly because, as Simon Wren-Lewis points out, “The prosperity of the average citizen in this country has hardly increased over the period of this coalition government – a result that is totally unprecedented since at least World War II.”

The rise of UKIP, from just 3 per cent in 2010 to 14 per cent in recent polls, has been much more steady. The party and their voters are first and foremost Eurosceptic and anti-immigration. But their supporters are also negative about the government’s handling of the economy and extremely pessimistic about their own economic circumstances. According to recent YouGov polls, 50 per cent of UKIP voters feel that the cuts have had a negative impact on them personally. This is important for understanding why recent good jobs and growth figures have not led to a big flow of votes back to the Tories. Most of UKIP’s support still comes from those who voted Conservative in 2010, even though they are the kinds of people who might have been expected to vote Labour based on socio-economic characteristics.

David Cameron’s 2013 promise of an in/out referendum on EU membership was ineffective in stemming the UKIP tide. Their current strategy of scaremongering about SNP influence on a Labour-led government might have more traction. A YouGov poll for last week’s Sunday Times found that 58 per cent of those intending to vote UKIP thought that “Labour intend to do a deal with the SNP, and it puts me off them.”

The rise of the SNP is ostensibly only about nationalism. Since 2010 a large section of disillusioned Labour supporters have moved over to the SNP, first for the 2011 Holyrood elections and then also to the nationalist cause in last year’s independence referendum. These people are relatively left-wing, anti-austerity and they no longer feel that the Scottish Labour party speaks for them. So this development too is about economic competition and not just pure national sentiment.

Since the spending and borrowing plans of Labour and the SNP are relatively similar according the IFS, the implications for a Labour government depending on SNP support are not so much on the economic side. Instead national defence, particularly the Trident nuclear deterrent, looks like it might be one of the most contentious issues.

The Conservatives used to frame the election as a choice between Cameron and Miliband. With the Labour leader doing rather better in the polls, they now frame it as one between a Conservative led government and a Labour one dependent on the SNP.

If the Tories are really worried about SNP influence, they could offer to join Labour in a grand coalition if necessary. This would diffuse both nationalist and economic divisions and lead to policy closer to the average voter. That may not benefit the Tory election campaign, but it would arguably be the best outcome for Britain.