UK Election Night Discussion.

[Torrain]

Scottish Tories hold Dumfries and Galloway with a similar 1k majority to their 2019 result.

After West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, this is the Scottish seat I was most leery about (it’s always been an odd seat, compared to others in the Borders), and I thought Alister Jack standing down would make it a lot harder. Turns out, given the weird peerage stuff with Johnson, then the election betting, losing the incumbent might have been a blessing in disguise.

Also officially means Douglas Ross is the only Scottish Tory running in this election to lose his seat which - while politically frustrating, feels oddly appropriate.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Wokingham has gone woke flipped. Woking expected to do the same.

Woking did, in the end, go woke.

St Ives also flipped, and by more than I would have guessed based on canvass returns. I would have stayed up for it, but I thought it wouldn’t declare until this afternoon! The result has been delayed in recent years by the delivery of ballot boxes from the Scilly Isles to the mainland for counting, but it seems they arrive significantly earlier whenever Andrew George wins.

I'm surprised at his persistence, 4 wins, 4 losses; still keeps running.

[Wiswylfen]

If anyone wants a laugh, look at the talk page for the Wikipedia article on the Labour Party. Multiple people are passionately arguing that it should be described as center-right, and someone says that Attlee is "not clean in the eyes of many British leftists" because he supported the Korean War.

It should be described as far-left.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Do we have any idea when the meeting with the King will take place for the transition of power?

[Torrain]

Do we have any idea when the meeting with the King will take place for the transition of power?

Sunak is just about to speak in Downing Street, outside No.10.

The King has just been filmed arriving at the palace - Sunak will head there as soon as he’s finished talking to resign and recommend Brian sends for Starmer.

We’d expect Starmer to follow sometime in the early afternoon, so he can head down to Downing Street. Expectation is he’ll start announcing the cabinet this afternoon/evening - if it was being delayed until tomorrow, I think they would have briefed the BBC by now.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

current vibes

[Helsinkian]

Is South West Norfolk (LOL), won by Labour with 26.7%, the constituency with the lowest winning share, or have I missed somewhere? Blackburn was slightly higher.

Here's a list of all constituencies with a winning vote share below 30%, as I can gather (might have missed some):

Just came in:

Dumfries & Galloway

CON 29.6%

[Blair]

Will post my longer thoughts but am curious why all the polls overstated labours national vote share… although there was a lot of last minute polling show labours vote share decreasing to around 37%

I can’t work out if the vote share was always going to be low, or if this was a by product of the campaign

[Torrain]

No results from Inverness today. Per local news, there’s going to be another recount tomorrow at 10.30am. There’s apparently a discrepancy between the verified vote totals and the hand-count.

Lib Dems are still confident they’ve eked out a narrow majority over the SNP.

Stuart Findlay at the Press & Journal in Inverness is running updates as the count drags on, if you’ve been dragged into this subplot: https://x.com/PJ_sfindlay

[YL]

You'll notice that the final map just makes so much more sense for all its wildness than pre-election projections. Often the way, and this is the almost mystically fascinating part of election results.

Send that map back to someone in 2005 and it would look familiar. Though they'd think Labour were polling in the mid 40's again, the Lib Dems in the mid to high 20's and that there was some 'we have always been at war with Eastasia' thing in the Middle East. Even Scotland looks familiar. Keighley being Keighley.

It's the map of a fragmented opposition. It's what FPTP does.

There's some 1997 patterns, a very 1966 pattern across Bucks and Herts etc.

If you’d shown it to me in 2005, I’d have had a very specific WTF reaction, but that’s to do with my own seat.

[Torrain]

Odd to think there’s an MOD civil servant retrieving stationary for Starmer to write his post-nuclear Letters of Last Resort at this very moment.

And up at Faslane, a bunch of squaddies are opening safes to burn the copies of Sunak’s letters that aren’t currently at sea.

[afleitch]

Will post my longer thoughts but am curious why all the polls overstated labours national vote share… although there was a lot of last minute polling show labours vote share decreasing to around 37%

I can’t work out if the vote share was always going to be low, or if this was a by product of the campaign

Mild differential turnout I think, plus a lower than anticipated turnout overall. Also missing the drops in urban seats. The narrowing in the last 48 hours was obviously real and the 24 hours without polling may have missed another 1% or so dip.

[TheTide]

A few observations:

- Just about any seat is easy to crack if a particular party puts enough resources and volunteers into it.

- This is one of the biggest polling errors in history in terms of the gap between the two biggest parties. Few will care, but had a 20% lead come to fruition then it would certainly have been something more resembling Canada 1993.

- Quite blatantly a defeat for the Tories more than a victory for Labour.

- The Lib Dems will probably get a spot on Question Time each and every week.

[morgieb]

Well what a night eh?

Results pretty strange. The raw Labour vote feels similar to 2015, but the pattern is a lot like a supercharged 2005 in that Labour lost a lot of votes amongst ethnic enclaves, a fair bit amongst liberals, but the key thing was that a lot of the traditional working-class vote came home.

Big losers obviously the Tories and the SNP.

As for Labour, I do think there is a bit to worry about despite the landslide. The bleeding in their safe seats generally didn't cost them, but in a few cases it did. There's going to be a lot of work in getting the Gaza vote back home, to say nothing of the Greens vote.

That a lot of marginals seem to be Labour mid-30's with Tories and Reform tying for second could be a worry. If (and it's a huge if) Reform don't implode those seats could well be gone for good.

It's a pretty good result for Reform, but that they only got 4 MP's (might be 5 if they win South Basildon + East Thurrock) isn't super ideal especially as all of them seem to be big personalities. Still, the sort of party that Reform meant that they were always going to struggle to pick up bulk seats despite what the exit polls said

Obviously a poor result for the Tories, but not as poor as what one might've feared. If they play their cards right they might be able to come back quicker than we think, but will they?

Although they didn't quite get official opposition this was still a hell of a result for the Lib Dems. Apart from Godalming & Ash (where I think Hunt was able to build a big personal vote on the back of looking like the one serious person in a circus show in a very posh area) they seemed to win all their targets, and so many of them varied from their traditional strongholds where the brand looked in decay to rich suburbia (especially in places like Oxford and Cambridge) and rich market towns (think Tunbridge Wells, Stratford-upon-Avon, Harrogate, etc.) I get the feeling that a lot of them the Tories will have a devil of a time trying to win back too.

Ultimately though 2028/29 comes down to whether Labour deliver or not. If they do (and find a way to keep their left/ethnic base happy) there's plenty of upside for them. If they don't....

[Epaminondas]

The 2024 results are eerily similar to 2001:
Labour 412 (412)
Tories 120 (166)
Lib Dems 71 (51)
SNP 9 (5)
DUP 5 (5)
Plaid Cymru 4 (4)
Sinn Féin 7 (4)

It would deserve its own map.

[Mike88]

In the end, the exit poll was spot on.

[jaichind]

I think LDEM at 71 maybe 72 is a record high for the 3rd largest party other than 1923

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Oof
https://twitter.com/BethRigby/status/1809071644805152799

This is the second time in a row that the MP who would otherwise be Father of the House was defeated. Besides Dennis Skinner, who else suffered this fate?

[Wiswylfen]

Well what a night eh?

Results pretty strange. The raw Labour vote feels similar to 2015, but the pattern is a lot like a supercharged 2005 in that Labour lost a lot of votes amongst ethnic enclaves, a fair bit amongst liberals, but the key thing was that a lot of the traditional working-class vote came home.

Big losers obviously the Tories and the SNP.

As for Labour, I do think there is a bit to worry about despite the landslide. The bleeding in their safe seats generally didn't cost them, but in a few cases it did. There's going to be a lot of work in getting the Gaza vote back home, to say nothing of the Greens vote.

That a lot of marginals seem to be Labour mid-30's with Tories and Reform tying for second could be a worry. If (and it's a huge if) Reform don't implode those seats could well be gone for good.

It's a pretty good result for Reform, but that they only got 4 MP's (might be 5 if they win South Basildon + East Thurrock) isn't super ideal especially as all of them seem to be big personalities. Still, the sort of party that Reform meant that they were always going to struggle to pick up bulk seats despite what the exit polls said

Obviously a poor result for the Tories, but not as poor as what one might've feared. If they play their cards right they might be able to come back quicker than we think, but will they?

Although they didn't quite get official opposition this was still a hell of a result for the Lib Dems. Apart from Godalming & Ash (where I think Hunt was able to build a big personal vote on the back of looking like the one serious person in a circus show in a very posh area) they seemed to win all their targets, and so many of them varied from their traditional strongholds where the brand looked in decay to rich suburbia (especially in places like Oxford and Cambridge) and rich market towns (think Tunbridge Wells, Stratford-upon-Avon, Harrogate, etc.) I get the feeling that a lot of them the Tories will have a devil of a time trying to win back too.

Ultimately though 2028/29 comes down to whether Labour deliver or not. If they do (and find a way to keep their left/ethnic base happy) there's plenty of upside for them. If they don't....

No it didn't. The traditional working class vote did not come home. We barely recovered from 2019 in many seats where those 2019 results were supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe. We are well behind our 2017 results in the vast majority. We failed to regain Ashfield.

Let me go over the results in my native North East.

We have regained Bishop Auckland with 42.1% of the vote. This election was supposed to be a Labour landslide. Boundary changes etc. etc., but we got 65.9% there in 1997. Hell, boundary changes, but we got 44.4% there in 1983. We got 48.1% there with the Jam Man (who is a racist, apparently). Is anyone really going to pretend this is an excellent result? It's not. There's no "well Labour did really well in these places!" cope available. Labour did crap across the board.

Easington was 63.7% for us in 2017, 61.0% in 2015, 58.9% in 2010, 71.4% in 2005, 76.8% in 2001, and 80.2% in 1997. This time? 48.9%. Meanwhile in Hexham we got 46.3%; in Newcastle North 50.3%; in my own Tynemouth 50.6%. English social democracy is dead.

[Mike88]

Results by country:

England:

35.5% Lab (+0.6), 348 seats (+166)
25.9% Cons (-21.3), 116 (-237)
15.3% Ref (+13.3), 4 (+4)
13.2% LibDem (+0.8 ), 65 (+59)
  7.3% Green (+4.2), 4 (+3)
  2.1% Ind. (+1.4), 5 (+5)

Scotland:

35.7% Lab (+17.0), 37 seats (+36)
29.9% SNP (-15.1), 9 (-38)
12.9% Cons (-12.2), 5 (-1)
  9.1% LibDem (-0.3), 5 (+3)
  7.0% Ref (+6.5), 0 (nc)
  3.8% Green (+2.8 ), 0 (nc)

Wales:

37.0% Lab (-3.9), 27 seats (+9)
18.2% Cons (-17.9), 0 (-12)
16.9% Ref (+11.5), 0 (nc)
14.9% PC (+4.9), 4 (+2)
  6.5% LibDem (+0.5), 1 (+1)
  4.7% Green (+3.7), 0 (nc)

Northern Ireland:

27.0% SF (+4.2), 7 seats (nc)
22.1% DUP (-8.5), 5 (-3)
15.0% Alliance (-1.8 ), 1 (nc)
12.2% UUP (+0.5), 1 (+1)
11.1% SDLP (-3.8 ), 2 (nc)
  6.2% TUV (new), 1 (new)
  3.0% Ind. (+2.8 ), 1 (+1)
  1.1% Green (+0.9), 0 (nc)

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The Good

Obviously, the disgrace of the Tory Party. Despite this not being as bad as it could have been (they're at the point the logo will be changed, not the name, to sum it up) and it would have been nice to oust a few more senior figures like Sunak himself, I'll take what I can. Particularly proud that I long saw Truss as the most obvious portillo, a fitting end to Popular Conservatism for her to be Tony Abbotted.

Labour's losses, where they happened, were punishments for hubris: the insane focus from self-appointed grandees in removing Corbyn, the eleventh hour removal of Shaheen etc. The Labour incumbents who lost all are not exactly icons (e.g. Kate Hollern should have been deselected, Khalid Mahmood is a semi-corrupt waste of space). I hope the McSweeneyist strategy will be tossed in time: it is not a recipe for long term success (as you can see from almost every Birmingham seat was lost to a clique of Andrew Tate fans, transphobes and Galloway cultists).

Talking of Galloway, it is very good to confirm that he is indeed a very overrated electoral tool. Rather than a savant who gains WWC and Muslim voters, it is further proof that he is someone most Muslim voters don't like and hold their noses for.

With respect to eadmund, I think the reversal of thatcher era regionalisation is probably a good thing: the idea that giant swathes of the country are off limits to either party regardless of the actual economic status of residents isn't that healthy.

somehow the Lib Dems returned! We should not be on any doubts to what these people are. They are not to the Left of Labour by design, regardless of their manifesto, and of course they are opportunists. My thought is - big deal! The flabby big two need to be held account by somebody, even if longterm the party itself still needs to create an identity.

The Bad

The big blunder of Starmer (not dooming here, he obviously had a very good election) was a refusal to tackle Farage head on. Did he even visit Clacton? Reform are not merely an amusing split on the Right, but a vessel that will seek to take over the Tories and forge a new identity free from the legacy of the 10-24 governments. If Farage had been tied to Truss and Boris and Sunak, his project might have been stillborn. Instead he will be an outsized influence going forward, and will soon turn his dogs on Labour.

The sectarian nature of Leicester, eagerly stoked by national politicians, is approaching crisis levels; and if something does break out, a lot of cynical politicians are going to look pretty filthy.

Poor Alliance. You gain a seat, you lose a seat. Obviously NI needs its own post, but my hopes for DUP to be seriously embarassed didn't come that true, despite paisley jr losing etc.

Very small sadness: I was hoping an Emily Brothers victory in Isle of Wight would allow some sanity/civility to enter the trans debate, but she lost (and not even close tbh - greens overtook her, as I feared).

[Mike88]

Rather a rainy and cold day for July.

[MABA 2020]

Woke up just in time to see Starmer become PM, as much as there are blaring warning signs in these results I think now the best thing is to enjoy the moment.

[Pericles]

What is going on in South Basildon and Inverness?

[YL]

What is going on in South Basildon and Inverness?

Recounting this afternoon and tomorrow respectively. Lib Dems think they have won the latter, and Reform were ahead on the first count in the former, though it sounds like there were genuine problems with the count.