Will Mums vote for Nick Clegg instead of David Cameron?
Mothers are a key target in this election and David Cameron has been keen to woo the Mumsnet set and the Conservatives are counting on their vote to win seats in the forthcoming election.
Picking up milk from the local corner shop after the school rush I overheard three mums talking about the election, more specifically how they planned to vote in the wake of the debate that saw Nick Clegg’s ascendancy.
All three concurred. They had been planning to vote Conservative again, but now they were thinking of voting Liberal Democrat based on Clegg’s performance. The conversation moved on to express a view that the Liberal Democrats had a chance to win in this constituency and ‘perhaps it is time to give someone else a chance’.
Anecdotal I know and an eavesdropped chat hardly constitutes a representative sample, but what if that conversation is representative of what people are saying? It could change with the next TV debate of course, either being amplified or overturned.
Here in the Newbury constituency the sitting MP is Richard Benyon, a Conservative who is defending a majority of 3,460. At the last election he beat Liberal Democrat David Rendel, who had been the MP since winning the by-election back in 1993.
It would not take many Mums, Dads or anyone else to think that Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrats deserves a chance for that majority to be whittled away.