The British Conservative Party

[minionofmidas]

The Tory party? Why don't you just stop flogging that dead horse? Can't you see it's already near-completely skeletized?

[minionofmidas]

The Tories rightward swing has made them un-electable in the eyes of most people in the U.K, and their voters are getting older every year (the average age of a Tory member is over 65... and it's almost that grim with their voters. Not as extreme a pattern as the CDU in Germany though...).

I don't know who told you the myth that the CDU is dying out (I suspect Lewis Trondheim ), but I can assure you it is not true.

You suspect correctly...the CDU is not dieing out, o/c - it's still much stronger than the Tories, across the board. But it's heavily skewed towards the generation now 60-80, and actually has been throughout BRD history (in the fifties, the CDU was the young voter's party). The CDU's youth problem, thus is an "everyone but the aged" problem, and its distributed very unevenly across the nation. It's worst in the cities (which is of course precisely where the Green votes are). Here's the Frankfurt European Elections result by age group.
18-24 Greens 30.6 CDU 23.9 SPD 23.3
25-34 Greens 32.3 CDU 25.1 SPD 19.0
35-44 Greens 39.8 CDU 21.1 SPD 19.8
45-59 Greens 30.8 CDU 29.2 SPD 20.5
60+    CDU 54.1 SPD 23.8 Greens 7.2

Greens gained 16 points in the 45-59 age bracket by the way - the last batch of "pre-68ers" turned 60 between 99 and 04...

[minionofmidas]

State Election Bavaria 2003 (My favourite one )

CSU          59/58/61/66
SPD          13/16/19/24
Greens     12/12/8/3

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That election had some funny sides...my favorite bit was the poll (a week before the election)saying two-thirds of Bavarians hoped the CSU would not get a two-thirds majority in parliament, which it looked headed for at the time and did, indeed, get. Yet, it only got one-third of the registered vote (as turnout was abysmal) - so two thirds of Bavarians did indeed not want them to get a two-thirds majority!? (In truth, of course, many non-voters said they didn't care less and many CSU supporters said they didn't really want it to go over two-thirds).

[minionofmidas]

Homophobia:
Also back in the early '80s when Simon Hughes first won.
Pictures of Labour candidate and Elizabeth II.
Slogan, "Which Queen would you vote for?" THis thing was distributed anonymously but *probably* came from the local Tories.

[minionofmidas]

as that seat is very largely muslim and the swing was about 8% (and Labour held it, and it swung back into line in 2001), "sweeping and often unfair" is correct. But there is something to it.
Yeah, Muslims used to be voting 70%+ Labour (like the working class people they are, in Britain), and have trended heavily LD in recent by-elections and such. Not at all sure whether this will continue at the next general, if it does it might make for some, er, interesting, new Lib-Lab marginals. Probably won't though. Too much fear of PM Howard.

[minionofmidas]

Newham, Tower Hamlets and Brent are the only three UK boroughs where whites make up less than 50% of the population.

True. Racial voting can be a problem in all of them

IIRC Leicester isn't far off.

[minionofmidas]

Newham, Tower Hamlets and Brent are the only three UK boroughs where whites make up less than 50% of the population.

True. Racial voting can be a problem in all of them

IIRC Leicester isn't far off.

Local election patterns in Leicester are usually *worse* than in those parts of London...

I actually meant in terms of nonwhite percentage - not far off the 50% mark.