Crossposted at Slugger O’Toole…
UKIP has been consistently polling in the high single digits and low double digits across Great Britain for well over a year now. This is the most significant and sustained burst of polling for a fourth party in Britain since at least the Greens’ post-Euro election surge in 1989. Arguably, the UKIP surge is more significant than that, as it has not depended on the positive publicity generated by an unexpected breakthrough in an off year election fuelled by protest votes, but has simply emerged from nowhere, driven doubtless partly by ex-Tories disillusioned with the party’s record in government, and partly by the crisis in the Eurozone. Its support is also remarkably consistent from month to month, as opposed to the ‘sine curve’ of sudden emergence and equally sudden collapse more common to ephemeral minor parties in the UK and internationally.
