United Kingdom General Election: July 4, 2024

[Pres Mike]

I think waiting 5 years for an election is insane!

[Pres Mike]

A trio of Scottish polls have been released, each showing an SNP -> Labour swing. Norstat and Savanta both record their first lead for Scottish Labour:

• Savanta: 4% Lab lead
• Norstat: 5% Lab lead
• YouGov: 1% Lab lead

All polling was conducted between the coalition break-up and Swinney assuming office as First Minister, so he may steady the ship and recover a lead. It does appear in line with the medium-term, though:


See here for full details, and links to cross tabs.

Make that a quarter of polls - Redfield and Wilton just released a poll showing Labour leading the SNP 38-31 - needless to say this would give Labour a sh**t load of seats in Scotland and the SNP would lose dozens and dozens

Doesn't Labour need seats in Scotland to form a majority? I don't know why someone in Scotland would vote for the SNP in the general election. Independence isn't going to happen and you are throwing away your votes to help one of the main parties form a majority. Its like voting third party in the US

[Pres Mike]

Why has turnout fallen? It was in the high 70s for most of the post war era but in the 60s starting with Blair. The vote record remains John Major in 1992! The UK has nearly 10 million more people now.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1050929/voter-turnout-in-the-uk/

[Pres Mike]

Why has turnout fallen? It was in the high 70s for most of the post war era but in the 60s starting with Blair. The vote record remains John Major in 1992! The UK has nearly 10 million more people now.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1050929/voter-turnout-in-the-uk/

I think at least part of the answer is that people born in the first three decades of the 20th century had an overall firmer view of voting being a duty. Some were still of working age in 1992 but by the 2000s they were a much smaller part of the electorate for obvious reasons. Clearer class distinctions and boundaries probably played a role too. The big drop in 2001 was also aided by the seeming inevitability about the result and the view that politics was 'boring' (more so than usual).

Make sense, thank you! Post Brexit, turnout is roughly 2/3

[Pres Mike]

Why has turnout fallen? It was in the high 70s for most of the post war era but in the 60s starting with Blair. The vote record remains John Major in 1992! The UK has nearly 10 million more people now.

www.statista.com/statistics/1050929/voter-turnout-in-the-uk/

It’s declined especially among younger and working class voters. The former looks largely generational and will lead to a long term decline in turnout. The latter can be partially explained by how politics has become a lot more middle class, the change being most drastic in the Labour Party. Working class politicians are now a small minority in Parliament and Labour have a much less explicitly class based appeal now.

Why did the working class stop voting? Would explain the dramatic rise in turnout for Brexit, working class rage

[Pres Mike]

We live (for better or worse) in a considerably less politicized society than we used to and those cohorts who were young adults when it was a considerably more politicized society have now died. It is worth noting, as it is illustrative of a lot, that turnout peaked at the General Elections of 1950 and 1951 when there was a fundamental clash between the allocation of resources between large parts of society, the Attlee government having made the choice to maintain working class living standards at a bearable level through the difficult immediate postwar years rather than allow for pre-war middle class privileges to be easily restored. The emergence of 'the affluent society' only a few years later rendered this matter moot.

I know the Attlee government created the modern welfare state in the UK.

So, Attlee decided to raise taxes on the pre war middle class to support the lower classes? And this debate caused record turnout in the 1950s?

But once the economy finally recovered this debate was rendered moot? Were taxes lowered for the middle class or did profits improve enough to cover said taxes?

[Pres Mike]

What made Sunak decide to have a July election?