United Kingdom General Elections: December 12th, 2019

[Pericles]

Really hope Labour pulls through here, while Corbyn isn't great the LibDems and the Tories are both worse imo, and the LibDems still can't win in most constituencies so voting for them just helps get Boris back in. There is a lot of volatility so hope is not lost. However I am pessimistic about this and think Boris probably gets a majority.

[Pericles]

What would happen if the Tories fell around 10 seats short of a majority as they are now? So an effective majority is probably around 320 seats, and the Tories need at least 310 seats to be able to have the confidence of the House even if the DUP supports them. How would the UK move forward with Brexit if it's a bit of a status quo result, so like 315 Conservative MPs. In such a scenario Labour probably loses around 30 seats if not more.

[Pericles]

What would happen if the Tories fell around 10 seats short of a majority as they are now? So an effective majority is probably around 320 seats, and the Tories need at least 310 seats to be able to have the confidence of the House even if the DUP supports them. How would the UK move forward with Brexit if it's a bit of a status quo result, so like 315 Conservative MPs. In such a scenario Labour probably loses around 30 seats if not more.

The Tories probably can't count on the DUP anymore, not after selling them out to get a new Brexit deal.

Perhaps, but the DUP still loathes Corbyn, I doubt they back him. Though perhaps Corbyn could be forced to resign and the minor parties prop up a non-Corbyn Labour government and pass a second referendum before having another election, but there might not be the numbers for a second referendum in such a parliament either.

[Pericles]

Morgan had a majority of 4,269 votes (7.9% in 2017), in 2017 she suffered a 5.3% swing against her. While she did well in 2015, she also had a relatively close majority (3,744 votes, 7.1%) in 2010. This seat seems like it could flip, though tbf it probably doesn't.

[Pericles]

It's pretty much inevitable that FPP will produce many horrific distortions of the popular will in this election.

For example, if the Tory + Brexit vote is say 45%, but that vote is less split than the Remain vote then the Tories probably get a majority and the idiotic media will proclaim it as a mandate for a hard Brexit.

[Pericles]

The only thing I hope is that we don't return to Blairism or that Lib Dems do well. Hopefully it's a SNP + Labour victory. Tories winning is okay to me as well.

That first sentence doesn't really fit together logically.

[Pericles]

It doesn't matter so much whether Labour is definitively for Remain no matter what in this election, because either a soft Brexit or Remain are much better than Boris' hard Brexit, and not voting for Labour in most seats effectively makes a hard Brexit more likely.

[Pericles]

So Corbyn is now claiming that a trade deal with the US could cost the NHS £500m a week in higher drug prices. Tbh this seems like a great move, given how well the £350m claim worked.

[Pericles]

I can see it triggering consolidation of the Remain vote toward Labour (which we're already seeing some evidence for) so let's see where things go from there.

Why do you think this? Labour, despite what Corbynites would have us believe, still don't have any credibility on Brexit. The Lib Dem polling slide after the calling of the election was only a few points, was always inevitable once a campaign began and has since stalled.

For what feels like the 400th time, Labour are not a remain party

Besides, the Lib Dems will happily use this in every election leaflet and broadcast from now until December 12th in order to bring Tory remainers over to their side, so if anything, their share of the remainer vote will go up because of it.

Fwiw, I don't think this will change much except at the margins in a few Brexity & Lab held marginals where the Lib Dems were already mostly irrelevant.

Labour is offering a second referendum though. With Labour you get either a soft Brexit or no Brexit at all, both are clearly superior to if Boris wins a majority which would guarantee a hard Brexit. Labour isn't perfect but they're clearly better than the Tories on Brexit (and overall too).

[Pericles]

Best way to have stopped Brexit would have been to vote Labour in 2015. That was the most important election of our times, everything else just follows the ghastly course it set. Oh well.

I did. I campaigned on the doorstep too, on a trip in Thurrock where the TV actor Shaun Dooley was one of the people bussed in to the marginal seat.

Labour came third. Then Ed Miliband decided to throw open the leadership ballot to every Johnny and Jenny come lately that could pony up a sum less than what I spent on my lunch today instead of limiting it to actual members.

So we got Corbyn. Who managed to make multiple unforced errors in week one. Since then Labour supporters have spent a huge amount of time moaning about media coverage and very little working out a viable way of dealing with it.

Then there's been antisemitism. I quit partly because it was taking longer than a murder case from arrest to conviction does to deal with Ken Livingstone and things have gotten worse since then.

A Conservative majority is a realistic possibility here and to be honest, a heavy loss might be what Labour needs to bring some sense back into its politics. I'd rather have five more years of Tory rule if it gets us ten of Labour after that than vice versa.

Not that I'm particularly a fan of Corbyn or anything, but that's kind of a non-sequitur, as "limiting [the 2015 leadership election] to actual members" wouldn't have changed anything; the result certainly would've been narrowed, of course, but Corbyn had already secured 49.5% of the members' vote on the 1st ballot alone, so had it been a members' only election, he would've just won it on the 2nd ballot instead of the 1st, & Labour would still be right where they are today.

I think it is referencing that Labour had an absurdly low membership fee and lots of people joined to vote for Corbyn.

[Pericles]

David Gauke is standing as an Independent. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/12/ex-tory-cabinet-minister-david-gauke-to-run-as-independent He is now backing a second referendum, saying that the country could no longer be united around a "relatively soft Brexit". Gauke also suggested that people should vote LibDem in many constituencies (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/13/vote-lib-dem-urges-former-conservative-minister-david-gauke), saying "A Conservative majority after the next general election will take us in the direction of a very hard Brexit and in all likelihood at the end of 2020 we will leave the implementation period without a deal with the EU on WTO  terms – in effect on no-deal terms – and that I believe would be disastrous for the prosperity of this country."

Indeed he is probably right, Johnson has promised not to extend the transition period (though his promises are now pretty unreliable) and has even refused to give parliament a vote on such an extension, plus he has probably made some kind of deal with the Brexit Party. Therefore, the UK would have to negotiate a free trade agreement with the EU in one year, which is if anything more implausible than leaving the EU on October 31 was.

Good on Gauke for standing on principle, I hope he wins. His constituency I believe voted for Remain but I don't know much about the contest, does he have a good shot at winning?

[Pericles]

DaWN what do you see as the realistic best case scenario for the election? It seems to me that since only Labour or the conservatives can realistically form the government, in most constituencies people should vote Labour even if they aren't enthusiastically for Corbyn.

[Pericles]

Yeah I think there'll probably be some sort of polling error, but it's very risky to guess what the error would be. Maybe it will be a 2015-style polling error or a 2017-style polling error, or maybe the LibDems or Brexit party are significantly overestimated or underestimated by the polls. Even a regional polling error, if the SNP is overrated by 5% or underrated by 5%, could have a meaningful impact on the results.

[Pericles]

How come Boris gets heckled so much? Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like it happens more often than in previous elections. And divisiveness over Brexit doesn't seem like the explanation because most of the heckling isn't actually about Brexit. The other party leaders, who are polling worse, don't seem to get heckled as much.

[Pericles]

I think the combined result of the two main parties will be a lot better than people expected. Despite strong dissatisfaction with both parties, most people have a party they clearly dislike more, so people are starting to panic about the possibility of their 'greater evil' party winning and moving to the lesser evil (on both sides of the Brexit debate). The stakes being so high for this election are also increasing the momentum for a shift to the two main parties. The exception will probably be in Scotland where the SNP is the best chance to stop either the Tories or Labour in most seats and they are a good outlet for dissatisfaction with the main two.

[Pericles]

see what you wanna see innit

Doesn't help that if you drew up a list of 'Britain's most obviously dodgy pollsters' then the Venn Diagramme between that list and the list of firms with contracts with the Sunday papers right now would... well...

I usually am not receptive to the "Polls are junk, ignore them!" argument but I am more receptive to it for the UK than most contexts.

[Pericles]

Electoral Calculus has made some changes to their model that I thought were interesting. https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html

This latest update has cut the predicted Conservative majority from over a hundred to around fifty. We have also improved the handling of seats where parties do not stand candidates, and improved the tactical voting feature in the user predictor.

The major change is the new baseline. Our modelling works by applying regression techniques (sometimes also called MRP or RPP) to detailed polling information to learn how voters with particular demographic and political characteristics tend to vote on average. This information is then applied to the census and political data of each seat to get an estimate of the current voting intention of each seat. The new baseline is based on recent polling and should give a more accurate "shape" of political opinion through the country.

Following the Brexit party's decision not to stand in half the seats, our predictors now assume that Brexit support is only counted by respondents who live in a seat where there will be a Brexit candidate. Using this convention, measured Brexit party support will appear to have halved, being around 4pc-5pc rather than 8pc-10pc. YouGov have announced they will poll on this basis, but other pollsters might not. When using the user predictor, use the smaller number to avoid over-estimating Brexit support.

The current estimate, based on a 10-point Tory lead, is reasonably in line with expectations (perhaps slightly higher than expected), showing around 350 Tory seats and 215-ish for Labour. For the purposes of this post, I'll focus on uniform swings from the Tories to Labour from the projections, to keep things simple (of course a major factor will be where support for other parties ends up). A 1% swing from the Tories to Labour (a swing from the projected percentages, not from 2017) results in 326 Tories to 232 seats for Labour, even though the Tory popular vote margin over Labour is 8-9 points. Another 1% swing means the Tories have a slight net loss from 2017, while Labour also loses 20 seats, this is with a 6-7 point Tory popular vote lead (so a significant national swing to the Tories from Labour). From there the changes are less, a further 1% swing results in 308-247, then 302-253, and with a virtually tied popular vote the Tories still have a significant lead in seats, 300-255 (of course they probably are ejected from government in this scenario).

This is just one model, though the use of MRP may make it more credible. It is an interesting dynamic, and if true the Tory position is a lot more precarious than the national polls make it seem. It does seem to go against the fact that Leave won most constituencies. However, a lot of the constituencies with very high Leave votes that Boris is trying to flip also seem to have strong Labour majorities, so a big swing that reduces but does not eliminate the Labour majority in these seats would be useless to the Tories in terms of seats. I haven't researched this in depth, please link me to research others have done on this, but this is another source of uncertainty for this election.

[Pericles]

If the polls look like this on Election Day then Boris clearly wins. However, I think that the margin will most likely be closer and there is a significant possibility of a big Labour surge.

[Pericles]

G. Elliott Morris is a leftist hack it seems, he looks at a model that shows the range of Tory seats between 326-388 and he says he foresees a hung parliament.

 https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1196199682751565828

It seems like his personal opinion of how things will ultimately turn out, not him saying what the polls show right now (as I said right now a Tory majority is almost inevitable but on December 12 a Tory majority is far from inevitable)

[Pericles]

I saw two interesting articles.
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/11/16/the-latest-ipsos-mori-government-satisfaction-ratings-are-worse-for-the-incumbent-than-major-faced-just-before-blairs-ge1997-landslide/

Ignore the 2017 in the axis.

I don't think Labour would be winning a 1997-style landslide if it had a good leader, Brexit will polarize the electorate more regardless. However Labour should be winning this election, either as the largest party or a majority. It would be a hugely damning indictment of Corbyn's leadership if Boris actually wins a majority, though if the Tories are the largest party it would be a bit of a bad result for Labour (though in most such scenarios Labour would form a government, then it'd be that they underperformed without doing so badly as to actually lose the election).

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/11/16/for-how-long-can-johnson-continue-to-defy-gravity/

The problem that the Conservatives have is that while Johnson is himself popular, the government is not. The PM’s unusually strong +2 rating has to be set against the net satisfaction score of the government he leads of a fairly awful -55. This is a disparity that cannot endure. Political gravity may be temporarily suspended but it will, sooner or later, come into play: either Johnson will scramble back to the cliff-edge by pulling the government’s rating up towards his own, or else he will plummet chasmwards as opinion turns against him. My firm expectation is the latter because the fundamentals driving that unpopularity are much stronger; the big uncertainty is when it happens.

The article also cited Johnson's weak performances on the campaign trail and vulnerabilities that could drive down his personal popularity too.

Clearly this election is extremely winnable for Labour. So far they are blowing it on a historic level (with extremely high stakes), but it isn't yet over for them and Labour can still come back, and it's hard to see them doing as badly as the polls show (or more accurately, it's hard to see the Tories doing as well, at least in terms of seats). Labour's actual election campaign seems ok so far, too early to tell but there is potential there. I think Corbyn got a big opportunity with a debate against only Johnson, and Labour's message seems like a good one (the 'real change' slogan could seize on the dissatisfaction with the government). Currently without major changes the Tories probably end up with a 2015-style majority, but it could easily be that they suffer a net loss of seats and cannot form a government.

[Pericles]

Damn that was a letdown.

[Pericles]

The audience probably shouldn't be allowed to laugh and jeer in the debate, that factors into what the people at home think when they should just focus on the points the candidates make. This isn't a partisan thing because the audience laughed and jeered at both candidates.

[Pericles]

With Great Grimsby an interesting factor is that Melanie Onn endorsed Boris Johnson's Brexit deal (probably to try and get re-elected). I'm not sure how many people know about that, or how it'll factor into the election. This is of course a heavily Leave seat, Onn probably calculated that she could outperform by backing Brexit. However, it does seem quite likely (and ironic) that she'll lose anyway, and most voters won't care or even know. Perhaps it'll even hurt her by reducing Remainer support and enthusiasm for her, and even in these types of constituencies a majority of the Labour base are probably Remainers.

[Pericles]

The Lib Dems have had a real problem of strong support not being translated into seats under FPTP. It's no surprise that they're big electoral reform advocates.

Also seems that they underperform in every campaign recently (2010 is more of a mixed bag though where they overperformed expectations at the start of the campaign while underperforming end of campaign expectations)

[Pericles]

Also remember the LibDems ended this parliament with 20 MPs and brought on this election to try and get more MPs, it would be ironic if (as seems pretty likely) they end up with less MPs than they went in with.