UK General Election - May 7th 2015

[afleitch]

The issue is more with YouGov's subsample data than with its overall findings. They use an internet panel that is not demographically representative* and then weight the hell out of it to make it artificially so. Admittedly this sort of thing is becoming more and more common across the board, so perhaps its unfair to single out YouGov, but whatever.

_{*According to how this is conventionally defined, blah, blah, blah.}

Some panellists by their own admission who get regularly polled will often play silly buggers with the 2010 recall vote in order to make a point.

[afleitch]

Not exactly the world's best kept secret, but Alex Salmond is now officially trying to be SNP candidate for Gordon.  (I was hoping for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey...)

Well he's MSP for Aberdeenshire East and Gordon before that and Banff and Buchan before that. He turned down safe seats to contest Gordon in 2007. It makes sense that he will stand for an area he knows well and that knows him well.

Given that he could potentially be, unofficially at least, leading the third or fourth largest party in the Commons come May he is of course Westminster's worst nightmare.

[afleitch]

UKIP have suspended their general secretary. Something to do with candidate selection.

UKIP are like the Ship of Theseus. Is wherever all the sacked members are, actually now the real UKIP?

[afleitch]

Populus released all the data from their November polls into one big dump. LAB 36 CON 33 LIB 8 UKIP 14 GRN 4 SNP 3. There's 14,274 people polled.

Caveats and all but it's good for looking at demographic data. The SNP 'only' lead 36-31 in the Scottish subsample, but Labour's vote share would be the lowest in the country except the South East and South West. In 2010 it was the second highest.

[afleitch]

The Conservatives have already been in talks with the Lib Dems about continuing the coalition if the maths is there. I still expect the Lib Dems to walk away with 30 seats; not great but not a rout. The Lib Dems have, allegedly, agreed to an EU referendum simply to shut up UKIP (who I think will be shut up by the GE results anyway) and will get local government PR and another shot at Lords reform. The support for the Greens won't translate nationwide because they probably will have a patchwork of candidates in place.

Labour, behind the scenes, don't have anyone to work with. They really need a majority. A resurgent SNP is simply going to hurt them anyway even if the SNP end up the only possible partner (which will suit the SNP going into the 2016 elections in Scotland)

At the moment, though I actually think things will move back towards the 2010 status quo, minus a dip for the Lib Dems, I don't think there will be any party that is able to form a government with just one other party. If so, it's back to the polls in the autumn.

[afleitch]

Russell Brand is a tit but he nailed it when he called Nigel Farage a 'pound shop Enoch Powell.'

[afleitch]

Labour selection process for Holborn and St Pancras entirely clean...
no, of course it's not.

[afleitch]

but you have to remember that that 16% was the result of twenty years of a tactical squeeze which the beneficiaries of have pretty explicitly abandoned.

This is true. But the ceiling on the Labour vote there can't be much above 30% (a respectable share, let's not forget) which makes things difficult. My thinking about a noisy campaign was that that kind of thing can bring out latent sympathy votes and may also encourage elements of the Tory rump vote there to vote Clegg.

Which makes things difficult. I actually expect the Lib Dems to poll between 15 and 20%; something a bit like 1992/1997 but with a seat spread falling somewhere in the middle (I don't expect the Lib Dems to lose seats to the Tories in London for example). However there will still be a sharp dip in support, especially where they are currently in third place. What voters do 'nationally' in the case means bugger all in the constituencies. How the Lib Dems split when they 'return home' or cast a protest vote will vary vastly from seat to seat.

[afleitch]

Given that it seems Labour's collapse is stronger in their core areas the uniform swing map might be defective. They might hold on in their Glasgow suburban core.

[afleitch]

http://may2015.com/category/gqrr/

Fun with the demographic breakdowns in polls.

[afleitch]

Given how volatile the Scottish electorate is the word 'realistically' is generally an unrealistic word to use usefully

One thing to be aware of is that Clydeside is not the entirety of working class Scotland. Labour will probably hold up better (no matter how large the swing ends up being) in smaller industrial towns - most of which voted No - than in Glasgow et al.

Of course, depending on what actually happens next May it could simply be that Labour has outlived it's usefulness. Sometimes parties do 'die', to all intents and purposes.

[afleitch]

I'm so excited for this campaign to get under way.

It is likely to be the harshest, rudest, most un-British campaign since, ooh, the last one. I remember as a youngster hearing how shocked people were at the tone of the 1992 election: this won't have nowt on that, I tell's thee.

There has been a change in party spending limits, incidentally, so not only will 2015 be the most highly charged election, it'll be the most expensive too. If the only curious thing about our general elections which attracted you was the sight of all the candidates lined up like prized pigs at a country fair during results night, I suspect there's going to be an entire shed-load of things to keep you engrossed this time.

The big wildcard of the campaign is Ed Miliband himself. Ed. Every day. With real people. That's not happened before and hasn't been allowed to happen. It might go exceptionally well, or if he just comes across as odd for four weeks could bring Labour's campaign crashing down.

[afleitch]

The problem now being short of a majority, it's having to cobble together a coalition. We 'know' that the Conservatives and the Lib Dems have had continuing talks about what's on the agenda for 2015-2020 should they need to team up again, so much so that it's quite possible to rule out a Lib Dem coalition with anyone else. It's just there's no one else left. Labour, and I'm being half serous, half not here, would much rather go into a coalition with the DUP than the SNP; they detest each other. A deal with the SNP allows what's left of Labour in Scotland to wither and die and also sow seeds of resentment in England. Which suits the SNP. The secret is, and it should hopefully be obvious now, is that independence for Scotland will not happen by another referendum but by mutual consent at a parliamentary level; Scotland may have to allowed to drift off in order to restore some resemblance of normality in the rest of the UK if things continue as they are now.

[afleitch]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

But a monkey in a suit could have led Labour to victory in 1997 and 2001, while Blair was unpopular by 2005.

But in 1997 and 2001 they did have a monkey in a suit....

No. They had a Tory in a red tie. Which is why Blair won how he won and Brown lost how he lost.

[afleitch]

For the record I'm voting SNP in the GE (while I have done at Holyrood, the Tories have got my GE votes in the past even though they count for nothing)

[afleitch]

But a monkey in a suit could have led Labour to victory in 1997 and 2001, while Blair was unpopular by 2005.

I think that understates the degree to which Blair put to sleep a lot of the British public's insecurities about voting in a Labour government.

It's very fashionable to come out with all sorts of bile about him these days (usually regarding the Iraq war but also about him being a closet Tory) but Michael Portillo described him on This Week while he was still PM as a political genius and in my view he was correct.

There have been three political genius' in British politics since the war, as opposed to just 'good politicians'; Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Alex Salmond (if you follow the entire arc of his career so far) has the potential to be the fourth.

[afleitch]

For the record I'm voting SNP in the GE (while I have done at Holyrood, the Tories have got my GE votes in the past even though they count for nothing)

Which constituency do you live in?

I'm registered to vote in Rutherglen and Hamilton West.

[afleitch]

I think that understates the degree to which Blair put to sleep a lot of the British public's insecurities about voting in a Labour government.

Considering that Labour had a massive poll lead under John Smith I doubt that. Labour's landslide in 1997 was mostly down to the fact that the incumbent government was marginally less popular than cancer.

Curiously even accounting for the polls overestimating Labour, which they would have also done under Smith, what Blair did wasn't to hurt the Tories, who actually 'recovered' a bit from early 1995 onwards, but to halt the Lib Dems who had risen to a level not seen since the Alliance days and wouldn't be seen against until the Iraq War. It's probable that we'd have gotten a 2005 style result in 1997 instead. Which would still rank as a Labour landslide.

[afleitch]

Here's a fun fact. Since 1983, compared to the vote share in the projected national vote for local elections held the year before a GE, the government has increased it's vote at the GE by an average of 7, the opposition has decreased it's share by an average of 2 and the third party has decreased it's share by 3.

So based on the 2014 locals the Conservatives would have 37% and Labour 29%. That would be no change at all on what happened last time. If the Lib Dems and UKIP are seen as third party that would be 8% and 15% respectively. If Lib Dems are seen as a government party then that's 18% for them

[afleitch]

Yey...polls. So much for the festive break.

Opinium

CON 32+3
LAB 33-3
LD 8+2
UKIP 17+1
GRN 4-1

[afleitch]

Jim Murphy is a glorious train wreck. Even if it doesn't last for much longer, the last two days have been wonderful.

[afleitch]

Lord Ashcroft is either going to look very clever or very stupid come 8 May.

My money is on stupid.

Actually my money at the moment is on smart. Labour and the Tories are neck and neck before we even go into a campaign. Then when it starts, we get four weeks of this;



He's untested. If he can't handle it, Labour could end up performing worse than they did last time round (when they performed better than expected)

[afleitch]

Labour have put up probably the worst possible candidate they could have in Gordon.

[afleitch]

When would Gordon ever have been a "winnable target for Ed Miliband"?

Because the Lib Dems collapsed and Malcolm Bruce is retiring. Labour were second in the seat in 2005 and were just a bit behind the SNP in 2010.

[afleitch]

When would Gordon ever have been a "winnable target for Ed Miliband"?

Because the Lib Dems collapsed and Malcolm Bruce is retiring. Labour were second in the seat in 2005 and were just a bit behind the SNP in 2010.

Sorry, Afleitch, but that's anti-Labour hackery and you know it.

It's not hackery to point out that Labour could have targeted Gordon! It only needs an 8% swing which isn't much more than they would need to take Cambridge from the Lib Dems. I'm not saying it was number 1 on their target list, but it's not entirely an un-winnable seat for them demographically speaking.