UK General Election, June 8th 2017

[parochial boy]

I was in St. Albans today and saw an overwhelming number of Lib Dem signs. Probably doesn't mean much. Perhaps it's just that Liberal signs stand out better than Conservative ones which blend in, and probably Liberals are more willing to advertise their political opinions than Conservatives.

This. The Lib Dems always win the sign war in St Albans even in years like 2015 when they crashed to third. This year though (in the Marshalswick area at least) there are actually quite a few Tory signs which you don't usually see.

Yeah, I've always wondered why Conservatives are so reluctant to put up posters the way supporters of other parties do - I had a wonder round Putney at the weekend, and  you would have thought it was going to be a fight to the death between Labour and Lib Dems, but it's a safe Tory seat.

Even more hillarious, I remember being in Arundel in 2015 and only seeing Labour signs, in Arundel!

[parochial boy]

Guardian/ICM

Conservatives - 45% (-2%)
Labour - 33% (NC)
Lib Dems - 8% (-1%)
UKIP - 5% (+1%)
Greens - 3% (+1%)

Doesn't seem like Manchester has given the Tories the kind of boost we might have expected

[parochial boy]

Worth pointing out that Labour had lost the Jewish vote well before Corbyn became Labour - they went an estimated 70%-22% in favour of the Tories back in 2015

And this is despite the fact that Ed Milliband could have been considered Jewish - although the fact that he was generally not probably explains at least part of the reason why self-identified Jews in the UK tend to vote well to the right of American Jews.

Also, does every single post in this thread need to be made in reference to the American equivalent? Different countries are, you know, different.

[parochial boy]

It is true that the Jewish vote was already strongly Tory but Corbyn is pushing it towards being a monolithic Conservative voting block. Plus the anti-Semitism scandals since Corbyn became leader will have made the damage much harder to reverse.

I haven't seen any polls for this election but the Hindu vote (and possibly the Sikh vote too) up to now seems to be trending Tory too which could spell trouble for Labour both for the purposes of this election and in the long term in places like Harrow. The Muslim vote and the black vote remain strongly Labour (though nothing on the level that they are in the U.S) though I imagine this is at least partly due to these voters being highly concentrated in deprived, inner city constituencies where the Tories do horribly with everyone anyway regardless of the ethnicity/religion.

Yes, I believe the trend among Hindu voters came up very clearly at the mayoral election last year. Although, having said that, I feel that the Hindu (or even British Indian) vote is becoming quite class bound, as places like Feltham and Heston or Ealing Southall, which have large Hindu (although admittedly larger Sikh) populations have not been trending Tory at all.

I have also seen it proposed that British Asians whose families immigrated from Kenya or Uganda tend to be a much stronger Conservative constituency than those who came from the subcontinent, which would explain the trend in Harrow in particular.

[parochial boy]

I mean, at this point it is clear that YouGov are trolling us...

[parochial boy]

Re un skewing polls, obviously yeah its a dumb idea as after all, yougov had the tories on a 24% lead  in April and they haven't changed their methodology, so obviously something dramatic has changed which you cant unmake b arguing about how they weight 18-24s or whatever.

The alternative is that their panel has been swamped by Corbyn supporters in the last month, but I would assume (hope) the had some way of filtering out the impact of that.

Having said that, I do feel that, although one crosstab is clearly useless, by aggregating them over a number of polls, you can get a broad picture of the way thing are (not accurate numbers of course !). So I think we can say that Labour are winning young voters heavily, even if it would be presumptuous to try and argue over the exact extent of their lead.

[parochial boy]

YouGov poll of London:

Lab - 50% (+9)
Con - 33% (-3)
Lib Dems - 11% (-3)
UKIP - 3% (-3)
Greens - 2% (-1)

Would would make the better Prime Minister?:

Corbyn - 37%
May - 34%

If true, then that might actually put seats like Battersea into play...

Panelbase poll:
CON: 44% (-4)
LAB: 36% (+3)
LDEM: 7% (-)
UKIP: 5% (+1)
GRN: 3% (+1)


I read somewhere that Labour's internals are showing an even better picture (from my aunt's neighbour's milkman's cat's uncle - so take it with a massive fistful of salt).

[parochial boy]

Panelbase poll:
CON: 44% (-4)
LAB: 36% (+3)
LDEM: 7% (-)
UKIP: 5% (+1)
GRN: 3% (+1)

Apparently this was of 2015 voters only, so Panelbase are showing a single digit lead even when you rule out the "muh young voters won't turn out in the end" argument.

[parochial boy]

FWIW, the last YouGov (the 3 point lead) was based on an 18-24 year old turnout of 51% - nowhere near the heights that people have been claiming.

The polls maybe (I suspect they still are) completely overestimating Labour support, but can we please stop the unskewing and claiming that it is purely down to a huge increase in young voters who won't turn out on the day? The narrowing goes well beyond that.

[parochial boy]

Corbyn won't retaliate to a nuclear attack that isn't going to happen? outrageous!

[parochial boy]

Corbyn won't retaliate to a nuclear attack that isn't going to happen? outrageous!

He does have to write the letters of last resort if he becomes PM, so this is not a non-issue.

Apologies for the sh!tposting and may I forgiven and all, but it is a total non-issue, because no-one is going to nuke the UK.

Deciding to vote against the party that is best for yourself, and best for the country, because of some hypothetical situation that has absolutely zero chance of happening is completely insane.

I mean, people go on about "muh the establishment" all the time, and now you've got someone who's offering something genuinely different, and who is standing up, saying what he believes even when he knows its unpopular, and everyone goes back to "oh he's clearly not fit to run the country, let's go back to bashing immigrants instead".

I was sceptical about Corbyn even one month ago, but come on, saying "I won't use nukes" is not a sign of weakness...

[parochial boy]

I'm surprised there have been almost zero constituency polls in this election campaign. in 2015 there were a ton of them and it was interesting to see how the natiuonwide swings were being replicated at the local level.

Lord Ashcroft has had to reign back on the spending a bit, he's worried he'll get done for tax evasion

[parochial boy]

what the actual  has this thread managed to degenerate into?

[parochial boy]

tbh, in the even of a small majority, the Tories will probably hold it together - they are generally quite good at having their furious tantrums behind closed doors. Can anyone imagine the Soubry/Clarke wing interrupting the Brexit talks in the way the "bästards" did with Maastricht? I can't really.

[parochial boy]

well, at least no-one can accuse the polls of herding this time

[parochial boy]

On a side note, it's amusing that the Mirror's pollster are showing the Tories 12 points ahead, and the Mail on Sunday's are showing the Tories only 1 point ahead

[parochial boy]

"Corbyn is unelectable, he wouldn't even crack 30%"

That line seems to have changed to imagine how well a Justin Trudeau/Emmanuel Macron-type leader of the Labour Party would be doing.

Not really worth speculating on, given that in that circumstance the Brexit referendum might have had a different result; May might never have become PM; and even if she had, the polls might not have been showing the 20 point lead that inspired her to call the election in the first place

[parochial boy]

I've noticed that the YouGov model is predicting that the independent, Claire Wright, will win in East Devon. Does anyone know why this is on the cards? has Hugo Swire done something to make himself particularly unpopular locally?

[parochial boy]

I think this election was never about winning a huge number of seats (even if that was indeed expected and seen as a nice side-effect) and always about buying time (i.e. two years) in government to mitigate the negative effects of Brexit. Suppose Brexit goes wrong and there is an election in 2020. Voters would (rightfully) blame the Tories and they could have been out of power for more than a decade.

Given that there was absolutely, positively, definitely going to be an election until the Tories had a 20 point polling lead, that seems kind of hard to imagine

[parochial boy]

That first pic disproves the point some others were making that more people could vote Labour based on economic issues.

Sort of, but well, sort of not - it really comes down to the question the pollsters ask (and the fact that what we call "economic issues" is a gross oversimplification.

For example, one of the other pollsters has been asking "whose policies are best for you and your family" and showing a small Labour lead. Now this is a question that implcitely talks about economic issues, and the implication that people read into it is likely to be "under which party will you feel best off under"

In contrast, the "who would run the economy better" question is getting people to look at it from a slightly different angle, that is more concerned about macroeconomic indicators like economic growth or unemployment and the like, which most people see the Tories as being better at.

So both deal with economic issues, but from different angles, which leads to differing responses.

To add to that, I don't think there is really much disputing the fact that Labour's rise in the polls is down to the fact that the campaign has very much focused on bread and butter (ie economic) issues like healthcare, taxes, benefits, nationalisation of industries and so on. On many of these issues, Labour do have widespread public support, see this poll on support for nationalisation from a few weeks ago.

[parochial boy]

Indeed again very funny (and totally surprising of course) that Left-Wingers cry about "racism" because Diane Abbott, who is the only person in the world who lets Maxine-Waters and Nancy Pelosi look smart, is called what she is: The most incompetent and dumb politician ever, unfit to run an ice cream store and a threat to every British citizen.

Thank god, the nightmare will be over tomorrow and for the next 5 years, Britain will prosper and get their freedom with Brexit.

I voted Leave and I don't think we'll get anything approaching prosperity; the dear people in Brussels are too smart (in a malicious kind of way) to let that happen.

I mean, whatever you think about Brexit, it is pretty clear that Theresa May is going to be absolutely taken for a ride by the EU negotiators - she is nowhere near as capable a negotiator as they are, and has already done enough to piss of the rest of the EU to severely dent any hopes of the UK getting a good deal.

Say what you like about Corbyn, but Keir Starmer would do far better at the negotiation table than the absolutely hillarious upcoming spectacle of May, Davis, Fox and BoJo being blown away Barnier and Verhofstadt.

[parochial boy]

Indeed again very funny (and totally surprising of course) that Left-Wingers cry about "racism" because Diane Abbott, who is the only person in the world who lets Maxine-Waters and Nancy Pelosi look smart, is called what she is: The most incompetent and dumb politician ever, unfit to run an ice cream store and a threat to every British citizen.

Thank god, the nightmare will be over tomorrow and for the next 5 years, Britain will prosper and get their freedom with Brexit.

I voted Leave and I don't think we'll get anything approaching prosperity; the dear people in Brussels are too smart (in a malicious kind of way) to let that happen.

I mean, whatever you think about Brexit, it is pretty clear that Theresa May is going to be absolutely taken for a ride by the EU negotiators - she is nowhere near as capable a negotiator as they are, and has already done enough to piss of the rest of the EU to severely dent any hopes of the UK getting a good deal.

Say what you like about Corbyn, but Keir Starmer would do far better at the negotiation table than the absolutely hillarious upcoming spectacle of May, Davis, Fox and BoJo being blown away Barnier and Verhofstadt.

That's maybe the most delusional posting I have seen on Atlas. Maybe ever.

Verhofstadt and the drunken man Juncker can't even blow a balloon, hope for you that you just made fun, otherwise you should consider a doctor.

Earth to Klartext, you should really come back some day, it isn't healthy living up there in your hate bubble.

[parochial boy]

Could anyone with a knowledge of NI politics explain why North Antrim would favour UUP and South Down, Foyle and Belfast South would favour SDLP?

I would assume these are generally wealthier areas?