UK General Election - May 7th 2015 (The Official Election Day & Results Thread)

[adma]

Did anyone mention Chippenham going back to the Tories?

[adma]

Cable out!

When I first read that, I thought your television lost power ;-)

[adma]

While I'm not much up for number guessing (I'm more into wiggle-room allowance), I'd have to say that I saw a lot of this coming--look, in practice, Miliband was the UK version of Stephane Dion for the Liberals in Canada in '08.  And likewise with Canadian examples in mind, I was anticipating that with *those* kinds of polling figures, the Lib Dems could be headed for a single digit seat total--*not* the 20-30 base others were claiming...

[adma]

Second places are basically entirely irrelevant.

Not to fun-loving psephologists ;-)

[adma]

My feeling is that a majority of the protest vote that the Lib Dems hoovered up in 2005 and 2010 switched en masse to UKIP (and to a lesser degree to the SNP and Greens). That meant the Tory vote which stayed steady was enough to take all those Lib Dem seats in the south.

And also remember how a lot of that seat-winning LD vote was "parked" in the first place, i.e. a vestige of the throw-the-Tory-bums-out spirit of 1997.

Plus, when it comes to the SW, the fading memories of "local" leadership under Ashdown, Thorpe, et al...

[adma]

Funny how the Lib Dem collapse resulted in so much of Toryland now looking like Chretien-era Liberal Ontario, where the leading party's formidably 'way on top, hovering over a motley gang mired in teens and second digits...

[adma]

I'm not aware of any recent wins from general elections where they have actually lost their deposit. Anybody?

Not sure. Let's check a few possible candidates.

Liverpool Wavertree is the partial successor to Liverpool Mossley Hill - 6.0% there. Equally they weren't far off in Colne Valley - 6.0% again.

Found one! Leeds West (1983-87) - 3.9%

And another! Leicester South (2004b-05) - 4.6%

And another! Cambridgeshire North East (1973-87) - 4.5%

And an arguable one - Erith & Thamesmead - 2.3%. Thamesmead was part of Woolwich which, as you know, was an SDP seat in the 1980s. Which leads me to note that deposits were also lost in both Plymouth seats.

If I may cheat, there's also the matter of Mike Hancock's 1.7% in Portsmouth South ;-)

[adma]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_West_Derby_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

This might be their biggest epic fail. I'm sure someone will see what I'm referring to...

Liberal Democrat behind the Liberal candidate?

Hardly surprising given the Liberal survival there for 25 years.

Indeed, if you notice here, Steve Radford's been doing well as an old-school Liberal for some time now--better than LD in both 1997 and 2001, nearly even in 2005, etc...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_West_Derby_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

[adma]

There is an argument to be made that providing politicians with such information is a bad idea. It potentially provides fuel for rather cynical voter and manipulation, not to mention as to how to draw the lines, although Britain is the City on the Hill as compared to the US on that one, which is pretty much a cesspool.

Yet the case of Canada, which seems to have become a frontrunner in open-data polling-station mapping, suggests otherwise--to the point where it can be argued that *suppressing* such data is more reflective of a tinpot cesspool mentality...

Oh, incidentally: if you want evidence of working-class Labour decline, my favourite examples are how Coventry and Stoke are now slipping into or dangerously close to marginality.

[adma]

There is an argument to be made that providing politicians with such information is a bad idea. It potentially provides fuel for rather cynical voter and manipulation, not to mention as to how to draw the lines, although Britain is the City on the Hill as compared to the US on that one, which is pretty much a cesspool.

Yet the case of Canada, which seems to have become a frontrunner in open-data polling-station mapping, suggests otherwise--to the point where it can be argued that *suppressing* such data is more reflective of a tinpot cesspool mentality...

And if you want proof, here's a map of north Calgary from the Alberta election thread.  (Sexy, isn't it?)