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

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Fair enough, but with respect to the UKIP voters up there who were formerly Labour voters, does that not indicate some estrangement with the party, an estrangement that will not be easy to assuage?

That doesn't mean that they're about to vote bloody Tory.

[Torie]

Fair enough, but with respect to the UKIP voters up there who were formerly Labour voters, does that not indicate some estrangement with the party, an estrangement that will not be easy to assuage?

That doesn't mean that they're about to vote bloody Tory.

Give them time baby, give them time. Who would have thought Harlan County, KY would have become a Pub bastion 20 years ago?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I know these places and you don't and you haven't got a fycking clue what you're talking about.

[Torie]

I know these places and you don't and you haven't got a fycking clue what you're talking about.

All of that may be true, and probably is true, but that does not necessarily mean that you are correct either actually as to what the future portends. I will be interested in reading more, and seeing more polling, about these former Labour voting north England UKIP voters. If you come up with something, I would be appreciative if you send it my way. Cheers.

[Hifly]

As somebody who has canvassed many of these Labour turned UKIP voters both in the North and South, I can assure you that they hold the very same vitriol towards the Tories as they always have.

They'll flock back to Labour easily if Burnham becomes leader.

[Torie]

When did you move to Germany?  Here is actually an interesting piece on the matter, to cut through all the vitriol. Interestingly it notes that some of the 2010 Tory voters now supporting the UKIP had voted Labour before that. The "red" UKIP voters seem to be a classic case of the cross pressured voter, and remarkably similar to a similar cohort in the US, that slowly moved Pub in places where the private industry trade unions withered away.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

West Midlands

[Hifly]

When did you move to Germany?

I didn't...

[Torie]

Gorgeous maps. I would love to see a map of the percentage swings in the percentage of Tory vote in England and Wales. Swings in the margins are subject to being distorted by the collapse in the LD vote, and rise of the UKIP vote, which I suspect affected Conservative absolute percentages less than the other parties. I also don't think there were many seats where Tories tactically voted for the LD's.

[Phony Moderate]

Very amusing results in Liverpool (both General and Local) as usual. Labour even broke 80% in Walton.

[Peter]

Not entirely sure, but surely in practice it would be a yes. I do know that 10% of the parliamentary party must nominate a candidate before they can get onto the ballot: which, this time, means self-nomination, lol.

If only John Hemming had survived ....

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The West Country, aka why the Tories now have a majority.

[Torie]

[Peter]

Anybody know why the Lib Dem vote held up so well in Maidstone compared to the rest of Kent?

Whilst it was their strongest constituency in 2010 in Kent, they had other pretty healthy numbers in other seats, and those didn't hold up anywhere near as well.

[politicallefty]

I know it's a bit late for observations, but one thing that surprised me as I watching the results was how efficient the Tory vote was in England (despite the combination of a collapsed Lib Dem vote and substantially higher UKIP vote). Despite Labour being up 3.6% and the Conservatives only up 1.4% in England, it was a Conservative gain of 21 and a Labour gain of 15. I know the conventional wisdom in Canada is that roughly 40% nationwide is majority territory. Is a roughly 41% vote share in England the typical threshold for a Tory Majority (obviously considering they're not going to get their majority elsewhere)?

[Phony Moderate]

I know it's a bit late for observations, but one thing that surprised me as I watching the results was how efficient the Tory vote was in England (despite the combination of a collapsed Lib Dem vote and substantially higher UKIP vote). Despite Labour being up 3.6% and the Conservatives only up 1.4% in England, it was a Conservative gain of 21 and a Labour gain of 15. I know the conventional wisdom in Canada is that roughly 40% nationwide is majority territory. Is a roughly 41% vote share in England the typical threshold for a Tory Majority (obviously considering they're not going to get their majority elsewhere)?

Yeah, it is comparable to 2001 in that respect, when Labour held most of its super marginals despite a 1.8% swing to the Tories nationally (which, uniformly, would have gained them maybe 15-20 seats).

[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...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Note that the yellow in Orkney and Shetland is LibDem. All non SNP seats and SNP seats with sub-10 majorities voted very heavily No last year.

Anyway, what's so striking is how level the majorities are.

[Brittain33]

Fair enough, but with respect to the UKIP voters up there who were formerly Labour voters, does that not indicate some estrangement with the party, an estrangement that will not be easy to assuage?

That doesn't mean that they're about to vote bloody Tory.

Give them time baby, give them time. Who would have thought Harlan County, KY would have become a Pub bastion 20 years ago?

Who is Margaret Thatcher in this analogy? Harlan County doesn't have much animus toward Reagan, I don't think.

Similarly, Ed Miliband may be a bit disconnected from Labour's roots but it's not quite like Barack Obama's reception in Appalachia.

[kcguy]

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?

My first post was off-the-cuff.  You made me work for this one. 

Dividing up the lost seats (somewhat arbitrarily), I put 19 seats¹ in Group #1.  They went 12 to the Conservatives and 7 to the SNP.

I put 5 seats² in Group #2.  (I was thinking of Simon Hughes's seat when I said this, and they weren't a lot of other similar seats, so I included a couple of seats that came to the Lib Dems through the Social Democratic Party's break with Labour.)  They went 3 to Labour and 2 to the Conservatives in 2015.

I put 17 seats³ in Group #3.  (Some of these were reactions against the post-Thatcher Conservatives, but many of these were cases where the Lib Dems or their Liberal predecessors won a by-election through a protest vote and just managed to hold on through one general election after another.)  These went 13 to the Conservatives, 1 to Labour, and 3 to the SNP.

The remaining 8 seats⁴ went to Group #4.  (These were mainly university seats or seats with large Muslim populations.)  All 8 went to Labour.

1.  Argyll and Bute; Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk; Berwick-upon-Tweed; Brecon and Radnorshire; Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross; Chippenham; Gordon; Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch, and Strathspey; North Cornwall; North Devon; Ross, Skye and Lochaber; Saint Austell and Newquay; Saint Ives; Somerton and Frome; Taunton Deane; Torbay; Wells; West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine; and Yeovil.
2.  Bermondsey and Old Southwark; Birmingham Yardley; Cardiff Central; Colchester; and Portsmouth South.
3.  Bath; Bristol West; Cheadle; Cheltenham; Eastbourne; East Dunbartonshire; Eastleigh; Edinburgh West; Hazel Grove; Kingston and Surbiton; Lewes; Mid Dorset and North Poole; North East Fife; Solihull; Sutton and Cheam; Thornbury and Yate; and Twickenham.
4.  Bradford East; Brent Central; Burnley; Cambridge; Hornsey and Wood Green; Manchester Withington; Norwich South; and Redcar.

[kcguy]

Just a random thought:

I tend to associate certain UK elections with certain words or phrases.
1959 ("You never had it so good")
1979 ("The winter of our discontent")
1983 ("The longest suicide note in history")
1997 ("Were you up for Portillo?")

For now, I'm inclined to think of 2015 as the Edible Hat Election.

[Oakvale]

This election was basically very boring despite being a surprise result.

[Sol]

What areas should Labour target to make up for Scotland next election? Would the West Country be susceptible at all to some Labour push, given that they used to like the LibDems over the Conservatives?

(Yes, I know the answer is probably no. Still worth asking).

[Peter]

Seats with the most saved deposits:
I have found:
Strangford with 7! (SDLP, DUP, UUP, SF, Alliance, TUV, NI Conservatives)

South West Surrey with 6 (C, Lab, LD, UKIP, Green, National Health Action)
Belfast South with 6 (SDLP, DUP, UUP, SF, Alliance, Green), and UKIP nearly made it (4.9%)
South Antrim with 6 (SDLP, DUP, UUP, SF, Alliance, TUV)
East Antrim with 6 (SDLP, DUP, UUP, SF, Alliance, TUV)
North Antrim with 6 (SDLP, DUP, UUP, SF, Alliance, TUV)
Ceredigion with all 6 candidates (C, Lab, LD, Plaid, UKIP, Green)

[freefair]

What areas should Labour target to make up for Scotland next election? Would the West Country be susceptible at all to some Labour push, given that they used to like the LibDems over the Conservatives?

(Yes, I know the answer is probably no. Still worth asking).

Nothing can make up for losing Scotland, and losing 3 seats to the Conservatives in Wales
Mostly, Nope. Labour has never broken 15% in some of these Rural ex-LibDem Tory seats, not in the modern political era- Post 1974. The idea of Labour even soming close to winning somewhere like Taunton or Somerton is laughable. There are one or two seats in Cornwall or Bristol that might go Red, and one in Dorset. That's it.