UK General Election 2019 - Election Day and Results Thread

[DistingFlyer]

Labour really has two paths now:
1. “Old” Labour
Have a leader more moderate and popular than Corbyn, and move the party in a populist, economically left direction while deemphasizing culture and social issues in order to appeal to cultural conservatives. Essentially, return to its Old Labour roots.
Pros: Potentially more easy electorally, can grab back marginal North seats.
Cons: Feasibly unlikely now against Johnson’s Tories and post-Brexit world.

2. “Remain” Labour
Fully embrace the Remain coalition of cosmopolitan, socially liberal and market liberal middle class; co-opt Lib Dem’s coalition, while maintaining social democratic policies and emphasis on economics. Similar to Blair’s New Labour, but without the neoliberalism and Iraq-baggage.
Pros: More feasible electoral future, seal in place the new Brexit political divide. Potential to unite the left by taking Lib Dem and Green votes.
Cons: Electorally fraught, difficult to break through with Lib Dem Remainers in the South; hard to win Conservative southern seats.

If I was Labour leader, I’d pick option 2, but that’s just me.

Option #2 is probably more likely, if for no other reason than they've won three majorities with that formula and zero (in the last forty-five years) with the other one.

[DistingFlyer]

Labour really has two paths now:
1. “Old” Labour
Have a leader more moderate and popular than Corbyn, and move the party in a populist, economically left direction while deemphasizing culture and social issues in order to appeal to cultural conservatives. Essentially, return to its Old Labour roots.
Pros: Potentially more easy electorally, can grab back marginal North seats.
Cons: Feasibly unlikely now against Johnson’s Tories and post-Brexit world.

2. “Remain” Labour
Fully embrace the Remain coalition of cosmopolitan, socially liberal and market liberal middle class; co-opt Lib Dem’s coalition, while maintaining social democratic policies and emphasis on economics. Similar to Blair’s New Labour, but without the neoliberalism and Iraq-baggage.
Pros: More feasible electoral future, seal in place the new Brexit political divide. Potential to unite the left by taking Lib Dem and Green votes.
Cons: Electorally fraught, difficult to break through with Lib Dem Remainers in the South; hard to win Conservative southern seats.

If I was Labour leader, I’d pick option 2, but that’s just me.

There's not enough woke London suburbia and university towns to make option 2 a road to an electoral majority. At least not with a FPTP electoral system.

To illustrate the conundrum of that potential strategy, despite the fact that the popular vote in the referendum was close in 2016, it's estimated that 406 constituencies voted to leave in while 242 voted to remain.

Option #2 is probably more likely, if for no other reason than they've won three majorities with that formula and zero (in the last forty-five years) with the other one.

Blair managed to win those majorities by bringing in new metropolitan middle-class voters to the party while simultaneously keeping the traditional working-class base in the North and Midlands loyal. Labour needs both groups to be successful. Remove one and the floor falls through, as it did last week.

Still, you are correct that strategy 2 is more likely (with the exception of New Labour's centrist economics which are not coming back...), but it hasn't much to do with which strategy that would actually be most successful. The fact is that most Labour members today are metropolitan types and they'll choose a leadership that speaks to their own preferences, not what is actually going to win elections.

Agreed on all points - although Labour's winning 1990s formula is gone, their support base (and caucus) still reflects those years to some small degree. The kicking they took yesterday will also probably encourage such a candidate (I wasn't suggesting above that they necessarily could succeed Blair-style now, but in the party's present state it's understandable to look to a previous winning play.)

Blair was of course often compared to Clinton when they were in office, and the likeness does have some justification (bringing in affluent urban-&-suburbanites), but a key difference is that a Nixon-Reagan realignment hadn't really happened in Britain yet - yes, Margaret Thatcher had her 'Essex Man,' but he was (a) mostly in the South and (b) already in the process of moving from the working to middle class. Blue-collar northerners did not come over to her, and the Tories still won heavily among the ABC1 types (leads of 30% or more) and didn't do nearly as well among the rest. One reason for the big Reagan wins in the 1980s was that, like Blair, he had grabbed a big chunk of the opposition's base while keeping all of his own at the same time. Clinton got back some (though certainly not all) of those voters, but also took out a piece of the other party's base (affluent northeasterners & west coasters) - clean sweeps of New England had only happened once before for a Democrat, but are now the norm.

A lot of media outlets have compared Boris Johnson to Donald Trump, but I can't really agree with that - apart from Europe (a big issue, admittedly!) Johnson has been more of an old One Nation Tory than a hardcore right-winger (or spitting, rabble-rousing demagogue). Last week's election is also not really comparable to the one three years ago in the US: if it was, then the Tories would have swept the North, won decently in the Midlands, and gotten crushed in London & the Home Counties, none of which are obviously true.

Certainly comparisons with the US can be overused, but if you have to make one then a better comparison would be if Nixon or Reagan had followed Clinton instead of the other way around: the affluent suburban base has already been dented, but he's getting a big chunk of the blue-collar vote to compensate. (According to the Ashcroft poll, the Tory lead this time among ABC1s & C2DEs was virtually identical; contrast this with the Thatcher & Major years, or for that matter any time before that.)

[DistingFlyer]

There's a fairly recent precedent of the left working with seperatists in the Anglosphere. It didn't exactly go well.

I’m drawing a blank here. What is it?

I think he's referring to the coalition/confidence-and-supply proposal between the Grits, New Democrats & Bloc back in 2008.

[DistingFlyer]

It is maybe understandable that some Tory voters were a bit "shy" in 1997......

It really hasn't been a thing in more recent GEs though (2015 was for other reasons)

Given that the exit poll supposedly focuses on marginals, it's not too surprising that the popular vote figures were off - the Labour swing was stronger in their target seats than in the country as a whole, and the effectiveness & efficiency of anti-Tory tactical voting made them make even more gains.

A lead of 47% to 29% would mean a 13% swing to Labour; the swing in Tory-held marginals was 12%, and the 'effective' swing (that is, one nominally necessary to make 146 gains) was 12.4%. Given that the rough number at which Peter Snow's arrow initially pointed when he was explaining the exit poll figures was a Labour majority of around 170-180 (he didn't actually specify a number until some results had actually come in, and then forecast a majority of 171), which was pretty consistent with the final result, I think that this may be why the popular vote numbers exaggerated the Labour lead.

[DistingFlyer]

Here's a link to my (finally completed!) spreadsheet of UK elections from 1885 to two weeks ago; obviously when the full Electoral Commission report comes out the latest figures may change a bit, but this should do for now. Have also thrown in the 2014 & 2016 referenda for good measure. Data come from F. W. S. Craig's books (1885 to 1992), Electoral Commission reports (2001 to the present) and Walker's Ireland books (1885 to 1918).

A couple of items:

Firstly, the italicized constituencies (1885 to 1970) indicate constituencies that roughly fall within modern-day Greater London;

Secondly, the Irish figures from 1885 to 1918 are taken from Walker's Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801-1922, which lack tables totalling the vote by party at each election; therefore, there may be some errors in my figures as I wasn't able to cross-check my totals with anything definite (though I've gone over them several times, I can't promise there are no mistakes!).

Thirdly, there are some hidden columns indicating swing figures for elections from 1959 to the present (doing it pre-1945 didn't make as much sense due to parties not always contesting a seat two elections in a row - Labour, then Liberal, then both, then just one again, and so forth, for instance).

Fourthly, the vote percentages from 1885 to 1945 have been adjusted for dual-member constituencies rather than simply being taken from the raw totals (this is why the 1945 percentages, for instance, are 48.0%-39.6% as opposed to 47.7%-39.7%).


https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dYxOhd1afsae8DNN-tSN77Uuk6ZUKi0O

[DistingFlyer]

Here's a map indicating both constituencies that changed hands and marginals that didn't (or, to put it another way, all marginals as well as non-marginals that changed hands).

The picture on the left shows the pre-election situation, and the one on the right shows the 2019 results. Constituencies aren't shaded according to my usual system, but simply colored according to marginal (<10%), moderate (10-25%) or safe (>25%).

If nothing else, it can provide a useful quick-glance guide as to how different parts of the country shifted.




To compare/contrast, here's one for the last election:


Here's one for 1997:


And here's one for 1979:

[DistingFlyer]

A similar chart to what I put up earlier; this one, instead of comparing the swing to gains made as a % of marginals, compares the swing to the so-called 'effective swing' - that is, the swing that would notionally provide the number of net gains that actually were made (for instance, the 144th most vulnerable Tory-Labour seat in 1997 needed a 12.4% swing for it to fall, while the 53rd most vulnerable Labour-Tory seat in 2019 needed a 5.6% swing).

The graph produces very similar - though not exactly the same - results as the earlier one.

[DistingFlyer]

Looking at cumulative swings, here is a map showing the accumulated Tory-Labour swing from 1997 to 2019. Have only included England & Wales, given the rise of the SNP in Scotland.



Here's one illustrating the accumulated swing as it differs from the overall national swing over the same time (12.3%):