UK General Election, June 8th 2017

[parochial boy]

Very selective data picking. I suggest you go read about the three days work week, the social decay of most British cities (captured beautifully in The Special's Ghost Town), the general feeling that things were falling apart, social unrest as unemployed youth turned football terraces into battlefields, NF running amok, and etc.

Situation was so bad that in one point some thought of overthrowing the government and placing Lord Mountbatten at the top

True, but why would any of those things be a reason to vote Tory? It's not like she reversed de-industrialisation, and her legacy was the continued decline and chronic unemployment/insecurity that may parts of the country still endure to this day.

Ghost Town was released under Thatcher by the way

I hate to say it, but the reason older people vote Tory is because they wish it was still the 1950s and Britain still had an empire.

Never underestimate the sheer weight of Little Englanderism among the inhabitants of moderately prosperous towns like Wellingborough.

I thought Little Englanders were those who did NOT want an empire?

It's original meaning... Nowadays it's just a generalised term for small minded types living just about everywhere that isn't one of the boroughs of Inner London.
Like this, for example

[parochial boy]

One thing I'd like some insight on - when people vote tactically to back someone else than their first choice, what are the typical flows like?

I'd be interesting to hear about Scotland and about Lib Dems in various regions.

This is a complete guess, but there was between 1992-2005 a fair amount of centre left voters who would vote Liberal Democrat in the South east and South West (in seats like Bath) to keep the tories out- and I know 1997 was said to see a surge in this. However after the coalition you saw a lot of these types of voters voting for Labour (I haven't got the numbers but there was a really big amount of Lib Dems 2010-Labour 2015 voters) which swung  about 10 seats.

Right, I mean, it's obvious that say Labour voters who vote tactically in a Lib-Con marginal will go Lib. But I've seen conflicting statements on how Lib voters in Con-Lab marginals swing and it's also unclear to me how Scotland works. Is Independence or economics most salient? Would a Labour or Lib Dem voter in a Con-SNP marginal go Tory or SNP?

Judging by the recent polls in Scotland, it would seem that there has been a consolidation of unionist voters tactically supporting the Tories in the last year or so. Whereas before, it was all over the place. So I guess Lib Dem or Labour unionists will be inclined to vote Tory tactically.

I have a feeling that hardly anybody is doing any voting based on economics at the moment, identity is trumping everything.

[parochial boy]

yeah, she'll drop all of these plays to the left as soon as the election is over. How many times did George Osborne come up with feel good chate about equality or whatever?

what's amazing is that the media still buys all these fictitious "Tories moving to the left" narratives.

[parochial boy]

So, assuming, as looks increasingly likely, that the Lib Dems do as badly, or even worse, than 2015 and even lose a couple of seats, where do they go next? and what becomes of Tim Farron

After all, this was really their golden chance of a come back, and they seem to be blowing it completely. There can't be much hope for them going forward.

[parochial boy]

Labour 90%
Green 78%
Lib Dem 70%
Tories 28%
UKIP 22%

[parochial boy]

So who exactly is voting Labour this time who didn't last time?

It can't just be Green switchers, because they must surely be massively outnumbered by the millions of working class voters allegedly defecting to the Tories.

Of course, the polls could be wrong again, or it could be the gain in vote share is driven mostly by a very probable decline in turnout.

[parochial boy]

Has anyone posted this?

Yougov

CON 44%(-1)
LAB 35%(+3)
LDEM 9%(+1)
UKIP 3%(-3)

OK, something is definitely going on with the Labour vote

[parochial boy]

It occurs to me that perhaps the Conservative manifesto was not entirely well judged in all respects.

STRONG AND STABLE!!!

STRONG. AND. STABLE.

[parochial boy]

Not wanting to count chickens before eggs have hatched and all, but the prospect of the Tories winning by less than 10 points, when they were nearly 25 ahead just a month ago is incredible.

Shoot me, but I think reports of the death of the Labour party have been somewhat overstated.

[parochial boy]

All these u-turns must surely be undermining the "strong and stable narrative", or indeed, the "Theresa May actually has a clue what she is doing" narrative.

She regularly showed that she was incompetent as home secretary, and is continuing to do so as PM - but the British public and media are so desparate for a "strong" figure, that they will let anything slide, even when the truth is staring them in the face.

[parochial boy]

Even with the Tory polling slump they can still net atleast 390 seats so I don't know what Labour is celebrating here...

No way would they gain 60 seats on a 1-2% swing. Plausible on a 4%+ swing though.

There are going to be some hugely different trends across the country, so it seems pretty hard to predict how vote shares are going to translate into numbers of seats with any real confidence.

Also, not saying I don't believe that Welsh poll, but if it's true, would seem to indicate traditional Labour voters are returning to the fold in huge numbers (unless the entire populations of Cardiff and Ceredigion are planning on voting Labour).

[parochial boy]

Not cool buddy.

Please leave this forum and never return.

Why? 

Back in Nov 2016 this thread appeared in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election forum

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=250593.0

titled

"Effects on election if Mosul is retaken from ISIS?"

Does not the battle of Mosul involve deaths ? Are not at least some of such death innocent ? Yet it was fine to talk about it as a topic on affect on an election. 

I side with jaichind on that. We're here to discuss politics and elections, and of course tragic events, natural or otherwise, can and will have an effect on politics and elections. Discussing them can actually be a way to cope with those. I'm not saying we should go all cynicism mode, and that tact isn't at all required though. And I'm allowed to say this because I live in fukcing Paris.

True, but  there is a difference between discussing the impact on the election; and immediately asking "ooh, I wonder if this will hurt Labour" while they are still counting the bodies.

[parochial boy]

how much labour btw need, to win even one more seat then in 2015....

well, i guess i ask the question in the wrong way....

wouldn't the conservative even win new seats probably, if labour would get more voters, hypothetically?

scotland alone is madness.

Well, given that the 3rd party seat share pretty much bottomed out in England in 2015 with the Lib Dems (there were what, 8 seats in the whole of England that didn't go Tory or Labour), I think it is possible that any two party swing between the Tories and Labour could translate into seats pretty directly.

That sais, trends are going to be mad - if the media story is true, lots of traditional Labour areas are going to trend heavily away from Labour, and plenty of "metropolitan liberal" type places (London, even Bristol or Manchester) will trend Lib Dem. And any relative gain in Labour votes (lol, as is...) would mostly mean them just stacking up massive margins places like Inner London and Merseyside.

Short answer: haha, sucks to be Labour.

[parochial boy]

I know it's only crosstabs, so shoot me for saying this, but the polarisation between age groups is absolutely ridiculous.

And if Labour's gains are coming from 2015 non-voters, then they are almost certainly being overstated; unless... turnout among 18-24 was apparently 66% in the Brexit referendum, so maybe they are ready to start turning out to vote after all

[parochial boy]

The polarization between young people (Labour) and old people (Tory) is really interesting and worrying at the same time.

This is like 2 generations in conflict with each other, much worse than the US but a general trend globally (maybe). If you look at the data, from immigration to health, it is like 2 opposite numbers among the 2 age groups & also very different concerns - 18-24 are concerned about healthcare, education, etc much more than the older voters.

I hope the conservatives realize what they are getting themselves into - A generation is coming into the voting age who are economically very left, strongly socially liberal, very pro-environment, less authoritarian - Where they will be getting 25-30% of the votes unless the opposing party nominates a terrible candidate. And the older voters who will vote for the conservatives will pass away with time. And the new generation replacing them will be more & more hostile !

I'm not actually sure that the 18-24 generation are particularly to the left of older voters on most economic issues (certainly not things like taxes, if you look over historical polling crosstabs). But they are very definitely much more socially liberal and internationalist.

Although, as someone mentioned earlier, there is a hell of a lot of resentment towards the conservative party for the way it has deliberately targeted younger people (tuition fees, cutting housing benefits for under 21s, allowing house prices to spiral away, large scale redistribution of income towards pensioners, zero hour contracts, Brexit...).

A lot of the British people I know in their 20s are voting labour this time round, and are doing this as conservative or right wing identifying voters - it is just that the Tories have burned so many bridges with young people.

[parochial boy]

IRA stuff

I dare say that, to the average person under the age of 45, who have barely any recollection/experience of the troubles, talking about the IRA are basically irrelevant. On the flip side, people over the age of 45 are already voting Tory.

So the "IRA! IRA!" argument isn't going to land as heavily as people think.

[parochial boy]

IRA stuff

I dare say that, to the average person under the age of 45, who have barely any recollection/experience of the troubles, talking about the IRA are basically irrelevant. On the flip side, people over the age of 45 are already voting Tory.

So the "IRA! IRA!" argument isn't going to land as heavily as people think.

True that, but 45+ plus voters particularly 55+ turn out in big numbers in comparison to young voters

Yeah, of course, but if, as it seems, the difference between a crushing defeat and a respectable score for Labour is being able to get, mostly younger, previous non-voters to turn out - then the IRA argument won't have as much weight as people thing

[parochial boy]

Yes. People are getting over-excited over a poll that suggests Labour would still lose. There are no points for coming second in a football match, regardless of whether it's 1-0 or 4-0...

Man City won the 2011-12 premier league on goal difference

[parochial boy]

Question for the UK pollsters. My understanding is that Labour's vote is distributed more efficiently than the Tories' (e.g. compare's Labour's majority in 2005 to the Tory results in 2010 and 2015). However, there has been some indication that traditionally Labour areas are trending Conservative. Will this have any effect on the relative efficiency of each party's vote?

As of 2015, it is pretty well accepted that it is no longer the case that Labour's vote is distributed more efficiently, as many once marginal constituencies (most memorably Nuneaton) have trended heavily towards the Conservatives as a result of Labour's already well documented difficulties in attracting working class voters (as well as demographic changes - most notably in the once marginal seats in East Kent and the Thames estuary, which are now all but dead for Labour).

Combined with the SNP killing Labour in Scotland, it seems that, based on 2015 it would take around a 12% lead for Labour to scrape a majority, whereas the Tories only need a roughly 5% lead.

[parochial boy]

Apologies in advance for some crappy analysis, but coming back to the question of "who is voting Labour who didn't last time", I haven't really seen anyone talking about the social class aspect, other than the "traditional Labour voters going to the conservatives" narrative.

Anyway, something I've noticed from looking at some of the YouGov crosstabs is that it does seem that ABC1 voters may be about to vote to the left of C2DE voters.

For example - the Yougove on 25th May that gave the Tories that 5 point lead had the following crosstabs:

          Con      Lab      LD
ABC1  41%     38%    12%
C2DE  45%     37%    6%

The more recent YouGov had C2DE voters voting to the left of ABC1s, but overall, most of the polls I have looked at have ABC1 voters giving the Tories a smaller lead than Working Class voters - so I feel fairly comfortable saying that the Middle Classes could be about to give Labour a better score than Working Class ones.

In contrast, according to YouGov, AB voters gave the Tories a 16% win in 2015, and C1 voters gave them an 8% win, which is roughly an 8% margin across the two groups.

Basically, it would seem that, accounting for the fact that Crosstabs have mahoosive margins of error but I couldn't thin of a better way to look at this, middle class voters have either not swung, or have swung very slightly towards Labour 2015.

Which, I would suggest means that ultra-marginal London seats like Hampstead and Kilburn or Brentford and Isleworth could be more likely to stay Labour than it might otherwise seem

[parochial boy]

The social grade breakdowns aren't much use from any pollster but from YouGov are worse than useless and not worth paying attention to. Can explain in tedious detail later.

Please do.

Yes please do, is it more to do with pollsters being particularly bad at capturing social grades - or is more the "Social grades are obsolete" line (which I'm not sure I really agree with)

[parochial boy]

Those things are basically made for activists more than anything else; I doubt that the sort of people who follow the Tory party on twitter are likely to be floating voters.

Well the Tories have spent a lot of money on finding swing voters to target on social media - see the recent uproar over the dark ads and dubious legality of the Tories' funding and expenditure on data analytics.

[parochial boy]

Guys, if you want to carry on this argument somewhere else, I've got a trash can you can use

[parochial boy]

Breitbart is not antisemitic.

Corbyn, in many respects, is an unpleasant man and he's clearly a bumbling fool but it's pretty hard to argue that he doesn't have the right intentions or that he doesn't care for the welfare of people. He's clearly not someone who approves of violence and the right's insistence that this is the case comes across as hysterical and deranged.

He doubtlessly cares about the welfare of his people, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Hugo Chavez probably cared about his people too. As for Corbyn not being someone who approves of violence, surely you could see why some think that him speaking of his "friends of Hamas and Hezbollah" suggests otherwise?

It's the old trap that the far left have a habit of falling into, in considering that anyone who stands up to "western imperialism" must be the good guys (and having said that, "both sides do it™" - see Reagan supporting the genocidal Contras, or contemporary US support for brutal dictatorships in Central Asia and the Arab Peninsula).

But can we please get back to talking about the election? not having this stupid "yes he did" "no he didn't" tit for tat?

[parochial boy]

Does anyone else miss the days when discussion of say UK Elections on Atlas was erudite, informed and for the most part good natured? As it stands this thread is a disgrace; I keep meaning check back a few pages to see if I have replies to make but I'm not sure if I can be bothered.

You were hopefully going to explain why polling data on social grade was unreliable?