UK General Election - May 7th 2015 (The Official Campaign Thread)

[King of Kensington]

"ABC1" is a quite heterogeneous social category.   Since the 70s women entered the labor force en masse.  It would be interesting to see it split by gender, given the leftward shift of women over the past few decades.  In the heyday of Fordist mass industries and heavier class voting (and fewer women working), women were less left-wing than men, but now they are quite a bit more so.

[King of Kensington]

Accurate or not, it would not surprise me if class based voting in Britain is declining. It certainly has in the US. I mean, after all, both Labor and the Dems focus most of their efforts on appealing to the middle class, no?

"Middle class" has a different meaning in the US and UK.  In the US, pretty much everybody who isn't Bill Gates or homeless is considered "middle class." 

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The British Labour Party, unlike the socialist parties of the continent, was never Marxist.  But I guess to you Fabianism and Marxism are indistinguishable. 

[King of Kensington]

In Canadian terms, what the LibDems had built them selves up to by 2010 roughly parallels what the Canadian Liberals had been reduced to by 2011: campus towns a la Guelph/Kingston and the Maritimey "Celtic fringe"...

That's a very apt comparison.

[King of Kensington]

Broadly speaking, yes. And aren't a load of people on Newfies even descended from West Country families?

Yes, the vast majority of Newfoundland's population is made up of West Country English stock in the rural areas and Irish Catholic in St. John's and the Avalon Peninsula (aka the Irish Shore).

[King of Kensington]

So is Ed Miliband now some sort of "hipster-geek"?

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/21/ed-milibands-slow-walk-to-cool?CMP=fb_gu