All nine British ALDE group deputies standing again for re-election, including former group leader Graham Watson, anti-Strasbourg, single seat campaigner, Edward McMillan-Scott and veteran big hitters such as Andrew Duff and Chris Davies are in real danger of losing their seats.
The new survey, released on April 13 by UK pollsters ICM, suggests that the UK’s labour party has increased its share of the vote at the expense of the Liberals.
The poll, on UK voting intentions, puts the Labour party on 36 per cent, the Conservatives on 25 per cent, UKIP on 20 per cent, the Liberals on just six per cent with the Greens also on six per cent.
"Veteran big hitters such as Andrew Duff and Chris Davies are in real danger of losing their seats"
Despite ‘winning’ two recent televised debates against British Liberal leader Nick Clegg on the UK’s relationship with the EU, backing for Nigel Farage’s populist UKIP party also appears to have hit a ceiling, averaging around 26 per cent over recent weeks.
But widely varying methodologies used by the leading pollsters -according to the ICM poll, support for UKIP is 20 per cent, while an April 3 ComRes poll puts them at 30 per cent - suggests that, with five weeks to go before the Europe-wide vote, a clear picture of UK voting intentions is still eluding political pundits.
Data modelling by the Parliament Magazine’s in-house European elections team still suggests that the upcoming vote will result in significant seat gains for UKIP with seat allocation, based on this latest ICM poll as follows:
Labour, 30 seats, up from 2009 by 17 MEPs, the Conservatives down from 2009 by six MEPs to 20 seats, UKIP up by six seats from 2009 with a total of 15 deputies and the Liberal Democrats losing all 12 seats won in 2009.