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

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Pleasantly surprised by the results of this election, other than UKIP being a thing and getting so many votes. Congrats to Cameron and all Conservative supporters

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

On the subject of the Lib Dems: what exactly is (or was ) their social and regional base of support? Do they even have one, or is part of the issue the fact that they rely a lot on protest votes scattered throughout different constituencies?

(apologies if this question has been answered before, or has an obvious answer).

This is just my impression, but it seems like Lib Dem base demographics is just several distinct groups layered on top of one another.

1.  People in regions distant from London, which were never really a part of the English Establishment.  In particular, the Scottish Highlands, rural Wales, and the southwestern peninsula.  These are not people who live in the country and commute to work for a large employer in town; these are people who live in the country and make their living in fishing or farming.

2.  People who live in regions where the Labour party acquired the image, especially in the 1970's and 1980's, of the "loony Left".  The Liberal Democrats would capture the local government, run it competently, and build upon that.  Here, their support came from not just the center and center-left, but also from right-wingers who would vote for anyone capable of getting Labour out of office.  Geographically, this would be random scattered seats in inner-city London, Liverpool, Manchester, etc.

3.  People who reacted negatively to the rise of the right wing in the Conservative Party in the 1990's, particularly reacting to stridently anti-European right-wing elements.  These people would have regarded themselves as too middle class to vote Labour.  Mirroring #2, Lib Dem support in these constituencies would be padded by people who would otherwise have voted Labour.  Geographically, the poster children for this demographic would have been the 5 well-heeled seats in outer southwestern London taken from the Tories in 1997.

4.  People on the left of the Labour Party who opposed Tony Blair and the Iraq War.  Cambridge and the two Oxford seats are the obvious examples, although the Lib Dems had already held the more rural of the two Oxford seats even before the war.

So how did these groups vote in 2015?

I'm guessing the first group voted SNP (in Scotland) and Conservative elsewhere, then groups 2 and 3 went Conservative, and then the fourth group went to Labour and maybe the Greens? Is that about right?

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

What's the deal with the random place in Scotland that voted Conservative?