Green party

Greens ahead of Liberal Democrats in YouGov poll

Calls to include party in BBC’s general election TV leader debates are likely to increase after it comes fourth in poll
Natalie Bennett
Greens' leader, Natalie Bennett, says the BBC seems 'to be concentrating too much on past performance rather than looking at current interest' in the party. Photograph: Mark Kerrison/Demotix/Corbis

Press Association

The Green party is ahead of the Liberal Democrats in a national opinion poll – a finding that intensified pressure for the Greens to be represented in a general election TV debates between party leaders.

YouGov research for the Sun has Labour on 34%, three points ahead of the Conservatives, Ukip on 17%, the Greens on 7% and the Lib Dems on 6%.

The poll findings maintain Ukip’s surge in popularity, which saw the Eurosceptic party come top in May’s European elections and leave it on course to take a second Commons seat from the Tories at the Rochester and Strood byelection next month.

The Greens have been ahead of the Lib Dems in polls before, but never with YouGov.

The BBC has cited such a “substantial increase in electoral support” in Ukip as justification for including its leader, Nigel Farage, in one of the live debates proposed by broadcasters.

Farage is slated to appear alongside David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband in a four-way confrontation – with the three established Westminster party leaders in another and just the prime minister and opposition leader in a third.

Explaining the exclusion of the Greens in a letter – after the party received significant support online for its demand to be part of the lineup – the BBC said they had “not demonstrated any comparable increase in support in either elections or opinion polls”.

Even if the party were to outpoll the Lib Dems, the starting point would be the junior coalition party’s performance at the 2010 general election, which was “substantially ahead of the Green party”, it suggested.

The BBC “will continue to keep any new evidence of increased support for the Green party under close review”, the broadcaster said.

The party’s leader, Natalie Bennett, said the BBC “would seem to be concentrating too much on past performance rather than looking at current interest in the Greens”.

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