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

[Zanas]

Do I smell an oh-so-slight increase of voting intention for the LibDems in the last few polls ? They've hit double digits in a few of the latest ones, a thing they hadn't done for a number of weeks, to my knowledge. Is that so ?

[Zanas]

These national polls are resolutely refusing to give us a coherent narrative.

Well, that's not really true if you remember their margin of error. The tendency is quite clear, and both parties being effectively ex aequo in the general public is supposed to give results with 2 to 3 pt leads for either of them. Lab and Con are consistently at 33.5-34, Ukip at around 12-13, LibDem around 9, and the Greens have been decreasing a bit at now around 5.

[Zanas]

Polls like these mean the result for each party has a 95% chance of falling +/- 3 pt from the given figure. Let the Cons or Lab have a consistent 3 pt lead in 19 polls in a row, and we can call that a trend.

[Zanas]

Would people be willing to vote strategically on this issue- vote for the party that's most likely to keep the SNP out?

I don't really get where you're going : if they vote in England, their vote technically cannot "keep the SNP out". There could be some of this kind in Scotland, yes, but I don't see what they could do about it if there were in England.

Or do you mean voters inclined on voting Tory rather than Lab because the Tories won't give in as easily as Labour to SNP ? I doubt there are much of these, most voters are primarily concerned with the economy, and maybe immigration or the EU, not Scotland.

[Zanas]

TNS poll for Scotland. Fieldwork ended over a week ago however;


SNP 54% (+2)
Lab 22% (-2)
Con 13%,
Lib 6%
Green 2% (-1)
UKIP 2% (+1)

I'm thinking this might be an outlier, but I've been figuring for a few weeks now that the SNP should just come close to 50 %, maybe just not above.

[Zanas]

If I'm not mistaken, this would be the first time a different party was one of the three largest parties in the Commons since the election of 1918.

And by votes in a general election ?

[Zanas]

Poll.

Scottish Labour wins the Worst Campaign Award of :

a) the year.
b) the decade.
c) the century.
d) post-WW2 elections.
e) all time.


Discuss with maps.

[Zanas]

So all the polls are just converging to a Lab-Con tie before election day so that they can all either be wrong or right together? LOL, 21st century polling really is a treat.

Well, I get you, but there may also be the case where they actually are tied, you know.

[Zanas]

At this point I wouldn't be surprised that LibDems actually end up slightly above Ukip for third place in PV. Not that it would mean anything great in terms of seats, really.

[Zanas]

Did anybody post about yet another UKIP candidate being kicked, this time for threatening to shoot a Tory opponent?

This one was actually headline news as well. Largely because of the whole 'threatening to shoot an opponent because racism' thing.

In the Southern US, he would get a bump and win.