Question Time election debate: 'I never considered voting Lib Dem until tonight', says audience member who called the PM 'mate'
25-year-old retail manager was turned on by the Lib Dem leader
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Your support makes all the difference.He has lost many twenty-something voters over his broken promise on tuition fees but Nick Clegg persuaded one of them to at least consider the prospect of voting Lib Dem with his performance in the Question Time leader's debate.
"I never considered voting Lib Dem until tonight," said Matthew Coucill, a 25-year-old member of the audience who won lots of fans on Twitter after he called David Cameron his 'mate'.
Mr Coucill, a retail manager and part-time singer from Ellesmere Port in Cheshire, said he was still undecided who to vote for but is tempted to switch his vote from Labour.
"Nick Clegg came across really well, I really appreciated the fact that he apologised for the mistakes he has made - I thought that was really good," he told The Independent after the debate.
"I'm annoyed that Ed Miliband didn't apologise but that's one of those things. David Cameron swerved around the question that I asked him (about which policies he would compromise in coalition negotiations)."
But what really annoys him is the fact that his vote is only foreplay for what goes on in the much-talked about 'backroom' coalition negotiations.
"The frustrating thing for myself and much of the younger generation is that we vote but does it really, really count? Because at the end of the day I think the people who choose are Nicola Sturgeon and Nick Clegg in that backroom they all talk about."
Would he like to be a fly on the wall in that famous 'backroom'? "Hell no, I don't even want to know what goes on in there," he replied, adapting Ed Miliband's new catchphrase.
But that doesn't stop him from calling the Prime Minister his "mate":
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