October 16, 2007

Campbell's age did have an impact on the Lib Dems

Unfortunately it seems that the polls, the party, and the public are indeed merciless, and last night Sir Menzies Campbell stood down as leader of the Liberal Democrats. Yesterday there was a seven-fold increase in traffic to the Lib Dem’s website, and it overtook both the Tories and Labour in terms of visits.

Campbell’s leadership was dogged by questions about his age and this became an even bigger issue once Gordon Brown decided not to call an election this year. Ming’s Liberal Democrat supporters always insisted that his age was irrelevant, but it seems that it did have an impact in at least one area: visitors to the Lib Dem’s homepage. The graph below illustrates the share of UK visitors to the website segmented by age group. It’s clear that under Campbell’s tenure the average age increased significantly. In particular, the proportion of visitors aged 55+ almost doubled while the proportion of those aged 25-34 more than halved.

As always with politics, it’s important to state that website visitors don’t translate into party members, let alone voters. However, if this is a reflection of the party's changing demographics, it is interesting to compare the Lib Dems with Labour under Gordon Brown and the Conservatives under David Cameron. This second chart looks at the most recent data for each of the three main parties’ websites.

The Lib Dems now have the highest proportion of visitors aged 55+, while the Conservatives have a higher proportion of visitors aged 25-34, and Labour have a higher proportion of the youngest voters. It will be interesting to see how this changes if, as expected, the Lib Dems elect a much younger leader such as Nick Clegg or David Laws.

Posted by Robin Goad at 02:00 PM
Posted to Demographics | Politics

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