Farage Will Not Win Seat Says Poll

[Gromit]

// Mr Farage is one point behind the Tories in South Thanet, and just one point ahead of Labour, according to a ComRes poll commissioned by Aaron Banks, the Ukip donor. It suggests Ukip has shed nine points in a month, with Labour gaining ten and the Conservatives gaining four.

Mr Farage has pledged to step down as leader if fails to win a seat. //

Can the party survive without him? Who should replace him?

[jno]

politicians should know better than to take the pledge during a campaign. It may take an outpouring of public sentiment to force hiim to recant/renege if the unthinkable happens.

[retrocop]

According tothe MOS Douglas Carswell is almost certain to retain his Clacton seat and is a likely successor IF Farage doesn't succeed in Thanet.Another suggestion is Patrick O'Flynn.

[retrocop]

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3025874/Nigel-Farage-buries-loser-poll-Ukip-leader-covers-survey-spelling-humiliating-defeat-Tories-Thanet-seat.html

[Svejk]

Really, gromit, you actually believe that? How embarrassing.

[jno]

obviously there is a danger in believing anything that Ukip themselves have commissioned.

[mikey4444]

Gromit....UKIP are barely surviving with him, so without him its difficult to see how it could continue to exist. He is about the only sane person in the Party, not that that is saying very much. I am going to predict that UKIP will be a flash in the pan, just as the Referendum Party was before them.

Farage has said, on many occasions, that his only purpose is bring about a referendum on Britain's continuing membership of the EU. He has gone further and said that as soon as that is achieved, the Party's job will have been done and it can disband.

He appears to have his back up against the wall in Thanet. In 2010, the Tories had 22,043 votes, Labour had 14,426, Liberals 6,935, but UKIP had only had 2,529. Its a big ask for the people of Thanet South to abandon all those non-UKIP votes and put him in place instead.

[New Judge]

However, Mikey, if you've been to that area lately you will understand why they are tantalisingly close to doing so. Much of Thanet looks like it was closed down by the Germans in 1942. Although there are pockets of "regeneration" this seems mainly targetted towards people who live in converted warehouses in Shoreditch. They go down there on HS1 for lunch, have a nose round the new art galleries before hotfooting it back to the capital in time for tea and scones. The locals are a bit peeved with the main parties because, unsurprisingly, this does not do too much for the local economy.

[jim360]

We'll see what happens but what that poll says to me is that the race is too close to call -- if there are three parties within two points of each other then the race is too close to say that this indicates that Farage won't win. Merely that he won't win by a clear margin, barring massive swings on the final day.

There's still a long way to go; Farage's best chance to win, really, was about a year ago at the peak of UKIP's rise, but still, I expect a few upsets come polling day.

[bhg481]

I'll be surprised if UKIP get more than a handful of MPs, despite what the polls say. People are happy to vote for odd parties in by-elections and pretend to themselves that they will in general elections (and tell pollsters that) but, when it comes to the crunch and they realise that they may waste their vote, they stick with the old favourites. The MPs who have defected may keep their seat but I can't see a lot of new ones appearing.

[ichkeria]

Carswell is likely to be UKIP's only MP after the election.
Small parties are up against it in our electoral system. The Lib Dems were on a roll in the last campaign, much more of a roll actually than UKIP are now on, and yet they lost seats

[New Judge]

But they still got the spare keys to No 10.

[Alex99]

Labour candidate Will Scobie urged people to vote tactically to stop Farage becoming MP for South Thanet.

In a letter to constituents, he said: ""If previously you have voted Conservative or Liberal Democrat, I ask you to lend me your support and join Labour voters, even for this election only, so we can vote to save South Thanet and defeat Nigel Farage." - Kentonline

Panic tactics ?

[Jackdaw33]

Self-serving. The same result could be achieved by urging Labour voters to vote Conservative. Now if he had said that, that WOULD be altruistic.

[mikey4444]

NJ...interesting what you say at 15:25. I have never been to the area, so I must accept what you say here.

I see from Wiki that this is Jonathan Aitken's old seat The less said about him the better but after all the opprobrium brought upon the Tory Party by that particular charmer, I am surprised that the citizens of the borough thought it was a good idea to vote for a Tory again in 2010.... Do they never learn ?

Now a chap called Farage is asking for their support ! Another Tory, but this time with a purple tie. It would seem to me that the constituency seems to possess some kind of death wish.

But what do the voters think that are going to achieve by voting in a frankly ludicrous and risible new Party ? They might be thinking that it's a good idea to have an MP with a high profile, but they had that with Aitken, and where did that get them ?

If they think that Farage gives a stuff for Thanet South, perhaps they had better think again. As far as he is concerned, the borough is just a convenient way for him to earn even more money, on top of the huge sum that he is already paid by Brussels.

[New Judge]

I think, Mikey, that in common with people from all over the country, the good people of Thanet are sick of having their concerns brushed aside by the main parties. People who have genuine concerns about the influence that the EU is having, the problems that uncontrolled immigration brings, the way that foreign aid has been enshrined in law when defence has not been similarly protected have nobody to vote for. None of the main parties will substantially change any of that so people with those concerns (and there are many of them) simply reach out for something different. They have nothing to lose.

[mikey4444]

NJ...I don't agree. They have everything to lose NJ. Voting for UKIP will achieve nothing whatsoever. Zilch. Its a wasted vote. If they are concerned about our membership of the EU, then the only Party that will give them a Referendum on the subject is the Tories. And even the Tories don't want to leave the EU.

Well, most of them don't anyway.

Voting for UKIP will be like peeing yourself while wearing dark pants...you will get a mysterious and vaguely warm and smug feeling, but nobody else will notice.

So, we come back to the central mystery of why anybody should vote UKIP.
It won't achieve anything. The best it can do is lto et in a few loony tunes on to the benches of the House of Commons, and some would say that there enough of those there already !

[Jackdaw33]

I think you'll find that most grassroots Tories DO want to leave the EU, perhaps not in the higher echelons.

[ludwig]

If the figure of 0 is true, they'll be gutted to be getting one less seat than the Greens.

[boxtops]

He's all over East Kent like a rash at the moment. Charlie Elphick is meanwhile bigging himself up in the this corner, taking credit for the new hospital (delayed until June), trying to resolve Operation Stack which makes Dover a can't-get-to area (wait til the passport checks start next week).... and so on.

[tonyav]

mikey, it isn't just leaving the EU that concerns Ukip voters !.