Who are Ukip’s new voters? The kind of people who decide elections

An opinion poll to be published next week will reveal that Labour leader Ed Miliband is slightly less popular with the public than the vibrant Islamic State commander ‘Jihadi John’ and the late BBC disc jockey Jimmy Savile, and only two points more popular than His Infernal Majesty, Satan. The same poll will also put Labour slightly ahead of the Tories and therefore on course to be the largest party in a hung parliament come next May, with Ed Miliband as prime minister.

This is but one reason why the next general election will be the most fascinating within living memory; the pollsters do not really have a clue what’s going on. The Labour party is reasonably popular, but its leader is considered useless. The economic recovery is undoubtedly being experienced, even beyond London, but the public seems disinclined to give the government credit. Liberal Democrat support hovers around 7 per cent and yet their vote holds up in council seats and nobody expects the party to be left with fewer than 20 seats, and probably nearer 30. And then, of course, there is Ukip.

There’s a case for saying that the best result for the Conservative party in the forthcoming Rochester and Strood by-election would be a win for Labour, enabled by a large Ukip vote for the defector Mark Reckless. This would give some substance to the otherwise questionable assertion from the Prime Minister that if you vote Ukip, you will wake up in bed next to Ed Miliband leafing through a manual on how to eat various breakfast items without appearing to be insane or an extra-terrestrial being. But Labour is putting little effort in — it has already given up the ghost in this frowsy, working-class Medway constituency, much to the disgust of its activists.