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

[Torie]

The UKIP was generally weak in larger inner cities is my impression. Outside that zone, I suspect the leak from LAB to UKIP was substantially greater.

No one writes 'The UKIP'.

Anyway, outside of Kent and Essex there doesn't appear to have been substantial leakage of 2010 Labour support to the Kippers.

Well, the post election Ashcroft poll figures are off a bit from the actual results, with the Tory vote a bit low, and the UKIP vote a bit high, with Labour about spot on, but per his figures, about 7.7% of those who said they voted Labour in the previous election (26% of the electorate), voted UKIP this time ((14% x 14%)/26% = 1.96%/26% = 7.7%).  The figure is more like 13.5% for those who say they generally vote Labour, suggest a drain over the previous two elections, and/or a bigger drain from those who say they generally vote Labour in local elections, or something.  Labour does seem to have a problem with lower SES white voters, as suggested by the New Statesmen article linked above. Perhaps the drain is more pronounced where you suggest it is. As time passes, Labour seems to be more and more like the Democrats in the US as to its base. Not only the economy, but politics as well, seems to be globalizing, perhaps, at least in the Anglosphere.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The middle class vote for Labour has held up, while its support among the working class has declined over three elections.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/05/it-was-working-class-not-middle-class-sunk-labour

Caution: there is a longstanding tendency in the Labour Party to claim about an election whatever it makes sense to claim in order to bolster whatever argument you might be making about the future direction of the Party. Those who seek evidence for a poor performance amongst 'aspirational' voters have found it, those who seek evidence for a poor performance amongst 'traditional' voters have also found it. Trickett* is a longtime advocate for more populist left-wing policies (I happen to agree with him on that). The parlous state of electoral research in Britain and the lack of reliable data other than raw election results** makes this easier for all concerned.

_{*The Labour vote increased by 4.6pts in Hemsworth, incidentally.
**Most numbers you'll see cited in any article will be either extracted from opinion poll aggregates (oh dear), from ordinarily conducted opinion polls (also not great), or from (I'm afraid usually methodologically very dodgy) special surveys.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Richmond where William Hague evidently had a large personal vote.

And the new Tory candidate is not White British (Nor British at all, really*), never mind local, and a local councillor who stood in protest of the selection held his deposit.

*Actually, he's British born. But this still feels like a revival of the relationship between the Tory Party and the Native Princes.

Ah, right. And that would explain the other half of the ten percent.

[YL]

Lab/Con swing in Yorkshire and the Humber, using Al's base map.  As usual with two party swing, some slightly odd things can happen when there's a third party involved.  NB the two highest Con to Lab swings in the UK were both in this region, and both involved a Lib Dem to Lab swing combined with Tories tactically voting for the Lib Dem.

[ChrisDR68]

Of the 6 general election defeats from 1979 onwards that Labour have suffered this is by the smallest margin in terms of the popular vote.

1979 - 2.2 million
1983 - 4.5 million
1987 - 3.8 million
1992 - 2.6 million
2010 - 2.1 million
2015 - 2.0 million

To put it in perspective though the election of 1979 was said at the time to be a watershed as the gap of 2.2 million between the two main parties was a then post war record (apart from the sole exception of the Labour landslide of 1945).

[Krago]

Where can you find the official results by constituency (without clicking 650 times)?

[Hydera]

Where can you find the official results by constituency (without clicking 650 times)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election_by_parliamentary_constituency

If you were meant to ask for a map, heres one that doesn't put you in a separate page every time you click and can just slide around.


http://principalfish.co.uk/election2015/

[Krago]

Where can you find the official results by constituency (without clicking 650 times)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election_by_parliamentary_constituency

If you were meant to ask for a map, heres one that doesn't put you in a separate page every time you click and can just slide around.


http://principalfish.co.uk/election2015/

The wikipedia article only shows 152 constituencies from Aberavon to Clacton.  Do you know where I could find the rest?

[Bacon King]

Where can you find the official results by constituency (without clicking 650 times)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election_by_parliamentary_constituency

If you were meant to ask for a map, heres one that doesn't put you in a separate page every time you click and can just slide around.


http://principalfish.co.uk/election2015/

The wikipedia article only shows 152 constituencies from Aberavon to Clacton.  Do you know where I could find the rest?

Wikipedia's editors appear to be adding new constituencies at a steady rate so it should be finished sooner rather than later

[Krago]

Where is everyone getting the data to do all these posts?

[Clyde1998]

Anyone know how accurate this map is? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/2015UKElectionMap_votes.svg

[Hifly]

Anyone know how accurate this map is? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/2015UKElectionMap_votes.svg

I haven't seen so much bullcrap in my entire life. Did you make that yourself?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyone know how accurate this map is? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/2015UKElectionMap_votes.svg

As a pointillist representation of data it is probably quite accurate (though I would have to question the value of presenting electoral data in that way), as a who-won-where thing it is obviously extremely inaccurate.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

If I ever become PM, I would force all election results to be counted at ward level for better maps.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If I ever become PM, I would force all election results to be counted at ward level for better maps.

Excellent idea.

It would also mean that the elections themselves would be better understood (see above).

[Torie]

If I ever become PM, I would force all election results to be counted at ward level for better maps.

Excellent idea.

It would also mean that the elections themselves would be better understood (see above).

There is an argument to be made that providing politicians with such information is a bad idea. It potentially provides fuel for rather cynical voter and manipulation, not to mention as to how to draw the lines, although Britain is the City on the Hill as compared to the US on that one, which is pretty much a cesspool.

[adma]

There is an argument to be made that providing politicians with such information is a bad idea. It potentially provides fuel for rather cynical voter and manipulation, not to mention as to how to draw the lines, although Britain is the City on the Hill as compared to the US on that one, which is pretty much a cesspool.

Yet the case of Canada, which seems to have become a frontrunner in open-data polling-station mapping, suggests otherwise--to the point where it can be argued that *suppressing* such data is more reflective of a tinpot cesspool mentality...

Oh, incidentally: if you want evidence of working-class Labour decline, my favourite examples are how Coventry and Stoke are now slipping into or dangerously close to marginality.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oh, incidentally: if you want evidence of working-class Labour decline, my favourite examples are how Coventry and Stoke are now slipping into or dangerously close to marginality.

It depends how you look at it. Results in the West Midlands outside the Birmingham and the Black Country (where the situation is a bit better but not great) were pretty poor for the second election running pretty much irrespective of class: results in some of the more prosperous seats were actually worse (the odd recovery from LibDem tactical squeezes excepted). Stafford (for instance) now looks like the safe seat a younger David Cameron thought it was in 1997.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Though I do wonder whether Geoffrey Robinson's pretty poor result may have had something to do with his abortive late retirement.

[afleitch]

This map uses a colour scheme I used last time (I need to upload this for more elections) It shows levels of support with some indication of who the party in second place actually is. White is used for ‘Others’ namely the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales. It’s also used to represent the lone Green and UKIP MP’s in England as well as the Speaker.

It plainly illustrates not only how far the Lib Dems fell (and Labour in Scotland) but how the number of actual marginal seats as a result has diminished.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And there we are, all done (well this series of maps is anyway). The usual caveats apply to all of them.* I suspect that I can explain far too much about the patterns and oddities in this particular map, but we all have our crosses to bear.

_{*Errors possible, visual patterns are always to an extent dependent on the exact structure of the key chosen, occasional mild accidental inconsistencies over rounding quite likely, etc.}

[afleitch]

Look at all that Labour red in central Scotland, Labour must have swept the board there?....

[Famous Mortimer]

Lots of news sources running articles about the runners up (Labour had the most second place finishes) but none of them actually give the damn numbers.

[adma]

There is an argument to be made that providing politicians with such information is a bad idea. It potentially provides fuel for rather cynical voter and manipulation, not to mention as to how to draw the lines, although Britain is the City on the Hill as compared to the US on that one, which is pretty much a cesspool.

Yet the case of Canada, which seems to have become a frontrunner in open-data polling-station mapping, suggests otherwise--to the point where it can be argued that *suppressing* such data is more reflective of a tinpot cesspool mentality...

And if you want proof, here's a map of north Calgary from the Alberta election thread.  (Sexy, isn't it?)

[Hatman 🍁]

Yes, and that was posted a day or two after the election.