UK General Election, June 8th 2017

[rob in cal]

    Aren't we missing the main problem with this election?  For us Atlas junkies we already have a full electoral plate this year with the French and German elections, and maybe Austrian as well.  Next year would have been more convenient. Now we are going to have to split our political excitement and energy between both France and UK at the same time.

[rob in cal]

  While it doesn't look like it will be happening, I'm intrigued by the idea of an anti-Tory electoral pact and its effectiveness.  Would it in fact help to win seats if Greens, Lib Dems and Labour put up one candidate in the main marginal or thought to be marginal seats?  Or would there be a counter movement, say UKIP candidates standing down in favor of all solid pro-Brexit tory candidates?
    One would think that there would be at least some room for an anti-Tory pact, at least in some limited seats, where two of the three opponents would have no chance to win, but even this doesn't seem likely.  Seems to me a missed opportunity.

[rob in cal]

   As we approach the French runoff election will opposition parties attempt to tie PM May to Marine Le Pen?  On immigration they both have the "tens of thousands" policy, with May saying net annual migration should be in the "tens of thousands" and Le Pen the stricter "ten thousand" policy. On EU policy May is doing what Le Pen would probably want to do as President.

[rob in cal]

   So it looks like UKIP will not be running candidates against at least some of the more prominent pro-Brexit tory MPs. This will be a fascinating just from the analytics aspect because we will be able to see how will these candidates do vs those Tories who do face UKIP opponents, in terms of national swing etc. It seems like it might be quite a lot of UKIP stand downs, which in a way is logical in that a prime focus of UKIP is/was Brexit, so it makes sense to not try to defeat potential allies who are actually implementing the policy.  OTOH, its a slippery slope toward political marginalization once you start bowing out of elections.

[rob in cal]

  If this Conservative lead holds up for awhile during the campaign the marginals are going to be quite different than the usual suspects.

[rob in cal]

  I like the Labour manifesto pledge for 4,000 homes for people with rough sleeping.  As someone who isn't a great sleeper I'll be following the debate about this with great interest.

[rob in cal]

  Labour probably not too excited to see so many seats without a UKIP candidate. OTOH do we really know just how many UKIP voters will really vote Tory if there is no UKIP candidate running, or just stay home or vote for some other party.

[rob in cal]

  Any thoughts about which seats will be most impacted compared to 2015 by not having a UKIP candidate this time around?

[rob in cal]

   Poll question.  With UKIP not running candidates in close to half the constituencies, are polling outfits taking that into consideration?  If not, that means they are asking people in the 40% or so seats without a UKIP candidate whether they plan on voting UKIP when they can't do that. So, the real vote for UKIP on election day will have to be  smaller than expected based on the polls.  Also, if these voters who want to vote UKIP but can't are not being asked their second choice than that might be underpolling the true vote that the Tories are likely to get.

[rob in cal]

  I forget what the numbers are of people voting by mail usually is. Also, by this time, with less than a week to go how many of them have likely already voted?

[rob in cal]

   It will be interesting to see if much of this Labour upsurge just means that they do even better in their strongholds, just pile up more and more wasted votes, but don't do as well where it really counts, in the marginals. Perhaps a few more Labour people will soon be wishing that Blair had introduced proportional representation.

[rob in cal]

  I've got a decision to make.  Should I work my dinner shift tomorrow night or take the night off and watch the coverage of the election (my dinner shift would coincide with a lot of the results coming in). If its close and dramatic I'd rather have the night off, if not would rather work.  At this point I'm leaning toward working.

[rob in cal]

  But on the west coast of the US, my shift starts at about midnight British time, so it does coincide with a lot of early decisions.  Still, I'm feeling more and more confident that we will see some type of Tory majority seat victory, so nothing too dramatic.