UK General Election - May 7th 2015

[Torie]

The LD pulls in the single digits, how many seats would they be expected to lose, and who would pick them up? LD seems to me this odd duck where in some seats, their main competitor is the Tories, and in others, the Tories are near invisible, and the race is with Labor.  It's almost schizophrenic.

[Torie]

And how much to numbers change, or individual races change, due to strategic voting in the end? How many voters engage in strategic voting?

[Torie]

Regarding Wales, I remember Cameron at PM questioning time, noting that the Wales had a lot of underpopulated constituencies (almost all Labor strongholds that have seen a population drain as the coal mines shut down), and they needed to be culled for "fairness" sake. Were they, or did the Lib Dems just say no, or did Cameron decide to back off, or what?

[Torie]

Are the Brit polls in the run up to the election normally this static?

[Torie]

As we all know, the GOP has an advantage with House seats because Dems tend to be packed in urban districts, leading to a vote waste that swamps whatever the lower turnout may be (particularly in Hispanic seats).  My impression is that the Tories do not have such an advantage in the UK. What is the Reader's Digest version as to why, assuming my assumption is correct?  Is the key the role of the Liberal Democrats?

[Torie]

Thanks guys. I suspected as much. After drawing a host of maps in the US where one just follows county lines and whatnot, it is amazing just how screwed the Dems are now. In a gerrymander free world, they would pick up less than 10 seats net from non-partisan lines - maybe as few as 5 seats.