UK General Election 2019 - Election Day and Results Thread

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Tories gain Wolverhampton North East on a 12.2% swing, nearly reversing the 2017 figures.

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Looks like Gower made a liar out of me - Labour hold it with only a 1.5% swing against them! Brexit Party only on 3%, so they can't be blamed for this one.

Aberavon in now: Labour hold, with an 8.6% swing against them. Rhondda held as well, with a 7.7% swing against Labour.

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CON gain  in Redcar

Swing of 15.4%; I think this is a new best for the night.

Ynys Mon has gone Tory too - north Wales loves the Tories tonight! A swing of 9.8% gives it to them. That seat went Conservative in 1983 & 1987, but before that you have to go back to 1722 (even further than Blyth Valley).

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. . . and Bishop Auckland falls to the Conservatives on a 9.4% swing. This seat fell in the big 1931 blowout, but otherwise has been Labour or Liberal since 1885.

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Tories grab Heywood & Middleton on an 8.3% swing; this has been Labour either since 1964 (Heywood & Royton) or 1974 (Middleton & Prestwich). I don't remember seeing this one flagged as likely to go down - the Greater Manchester area has certainly produced some surprises so far tonight.

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Tories gain Hyndburn on a 9.9% swing, Burnley on 9.6% (last won in 1931 by Gordon Campbell VC), West Bromwich West on 11.7% & West Bromwich East on 12.1% (also last won in 1931).

On the flipside, they lost East Renfrewshire to the SNP on a 9.3% swing.

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Tories gain Barrow & Furness on a swing of 6.8% - this means Labour is shut out of Cumbria for the first time since 1900.

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Tories lose Stirling on a 9% swing - anti-Conservative tactical voting seems to be succeeding very well in Scotland.

Jeremy Corbyn has held his seat, with the Liberals jumping into second place and achieving a 7.6% swing against him.

Dominic Raab has held on, with the Liberals doing very well indeed, gaining 28% and achieving an 18.5% swing; this has to be one of the biggest swings in recent times not to result in a seat changing hands.

The big news of the moment, though, is the fall of Sedgefield to the Tories on a 12.8% swing - first time since 1931 that they've won this (though you can say the same for quite a few seats tonight!).

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Liberals gain North East Fife - looks like an anti-SNP tactical vote this time, with Tory support falling through the floor and offsetting the SNP rise.

The Liberals will have a presence in Scotland after all.

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Bassetlaw gone, and it's not close - an 18.4% swing breaks an 84-year Labour streak there.

Boris Johnson wins with an increased majority - 2.1% swing toward him. Northwest London seems to be a bit kinder to the Tories than the rest of the city, if you look at this as well as the big increase in the Harrow East majority.

BBC forecast now closer to the initial projection: Tories 365, Labour 196.

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Tories have narrowly won Bury South on a 6.2% swing; given how well the Greater Manchester area (and eastern Lancashire in general) has done for them, the odds look good for Bury North too.

Jo Swinson out, but very narrowly.

North West Durham goes down on a 10.4% swing; given how the rest of Durham has gone tonight, this isn't a surprise.

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Karl McCartney has won back Lincoln on a 5% swing; with Grimsby having gone down on a 14.7% swing, looks like Labour's been cleaned out of Lincolnshire.

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Conservatives pick up Delyn on a 6.5% swing; unless Labour can work a miracle in Alyn & Deeside, northern Wales looks to be free of red tonight.

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Let's see - that's two former Labour PMs' seats going down and two former Opposition Leaders' seats getting the tightest results they've had in years.


Incidentally, Don Valley fell as predicted, on a 9.6% swing. That area (under the old, big Doncaster constituency) last voted Tory in 1900.

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Wakefield gone to the Tories on a 6.1% swing (held by Labour since 1932).

Birmingham Northfield gone too, on 7.2%.

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Does anyone have any good maps or CNN-level election result maps?  You will be forever in my heart.

https://www.bbc.com/news/election/2019/results

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Sky News just said that NI Nationalists will have more MPs than Ulster Unionists for the first time ever

Yep; not a very heartening prospect.

Additionally, Wales is now Liberal-free for the second election in a row (which is also the second election, period, where that's happened). They - and Labour - still at least have a presence in Scotland, which looked touch-and-go for a while tonight.

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Sure enough, how little time it takes for those northern Labour voters to transform from 'solid working-class citizens' to 'uneducated white bigots' in the eyes of many commentators. As people on this side of the Atlantic should know, you'll never get those guys' votes back if you start talking to & about them that way.

(Note that I'm not speaking as a supporter of Brexit, nor as a fan of the current Tory government - I'm neither.)

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Tory vote on 13.8 million votes now, with 5 results left - doesn't look like they'll quite break their 1992 record, but will surpass the runner-up of Labour in 1951.

Seat-wise, barring a huge upset it they should have 364 or 365, depending on how St. Ives goes. The Liberal Democrats haven't done that well in targeting Tory seats, so it will probably be 365. Either way, the exit poll was extremely close (though it was less accurate for Labour - it often is for the second party, as it was in 2001 & 2005).

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Some interesting tidbits on top two parties.

Tories:

Best showing vote wise since 1970 (so much of the population cannot remember when they did this well).

Best showing seat wise since 1987 (Most millennials cannot remember such a strong majority for them).

Labour Party

Worst showing seat wise since 1935 (so few alive to remember Labour ever doing this poorly).

Vote wise only worst showing since 2015 (got lower vote share in 2015 and 2010).

Unless the Tories do extraordinarily well in the three remaining seats, it looks like their total vote will be just a little bit less than 1979 (right now it's 43.6% in the UK vice 43.9% in 1979; 44.7% in GB vice 44.9% in 1979).

In terms of their lead over Labour, it's almost identical to 1987 (11.6% vice 11.7%), though obviously the parliamentary majority is appreciably less.

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Nobody can complain about the polls this time around - they led pretty much exactly to the right spots:



It's also one of those very rare occasions when a party extended its lead over the campaign instead of shrinking it.

(There are two constituencies still left to report - will update this chart if necessary when they come in.)


Here's an updated swing-vs.-gains chart; somewhat to my surprise, given all the talk about anti-Tory tactical voting, the Conservatives overperformed relative to the swing to a greater degree than they ever have - it's not 1992-level, but it's close:

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The Conservative vote in Wales rose to 36.1% - its highest level since 1895.

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The Conservative vote in Wales rose to 36.1% - its highest level since 1895.

Cymru am byth!

In contrast, Labour's 18.6% of the vote in Scotland was the lowest since 1910.

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Although the seat totals have gone up and down over the years, this is now the sixth consecutive election that has seen the Tories' share of the vote increase:

1997 - 31.5%
2001 - 32.7%
2005 - 33.2%
2010 - 37.0%
2015 - 37.8%
2017 - 43.5%
2019 - 44.7%

Not sure if that's ever been done before by a major party (though Labour came close with five consecutive increases from 1910 to 1929).


Additionally, while Mr. Corbyn has liked to boast about the 2017 election seeing the biggest jump in the Labour vote since 1945 (which was true - 9.6% vs 10%), he may be less inclined to advertise that the election yesterday saw the biggest drop in the Labour vote since 1983 (8% vs 9.5%).

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Also center left Ed Miliband hang on to his seat by a slimmest of margins, going down 22% since last election and he only kept his seat because of CON/BREXIT PARTY non-tactical voting

Because people don't vote for their local MPs they vote based on the national party

Ah yes, so much for the favorite "argument" of pro-FPTP crowd: "you're voting for a person, not a party".

It is rather rare for a candidate in Britain to buck the overall trends, but it does happen. I'm glad to say that here in NS, the candidates still count for a great deal (which is how I always vote).