UK General Election - May 7th 2015 (The Official Election Day & Results Thread)

[Torie]

Gorgeous maps. I would love to see a map of the percentage swings in the percentage of Tory vote in England and Wales. Swings in the margins are subject to being distorted by the collapse in the LD vote, and rise of the UKIP vote, which I suspect affected Conservative absolute percentages less than the other parties. I also don't think there were many seats where Tories tactically voted for the LD's.

[Torie]

[Torie]

Here is the kind of interactive map toy of the UK election that I was looking for, where you can adjust the map for various swings, etc. The LD collapse does alas make the map utility less useful than it might be alas, because sometimes it is not so much the swing between Labour and the Tories, as it is how the LD vote was divided up between the UKIP, the Tories, and Labour.

[Torie]

FWIW, here is Lord Ashcroft's post election poll.

[Torie]

FWIW, here is Lord Ashcroft's post election poll.

A third of LibDem support was just tactical votes

Edit: and Labour actually won voters who made up their mind on election day as well as those who made up their mind a few days before

Actually, per my math, more than 3/4 of the LD vote were tactical voters trying to stop another party. 19% of the electorate were tactical voters. A third of them (34%) voted LD, or a tad over 6% (6.46%). The LD's got 8% of the vote (7.9%). 6/8 = 75% (81.18% to be exact - 6.46%/7.9% = 81.18%). With the Greens out there and getting some traction, I suspect that there is a substantial possibility that the LD's will just disappear. There is political space for only so many parties at any one time. The LD's never made much sense to me in recent years anyway. They had no real raison d'être. They have next to none now.

I am assuming that this poll has at least some nexus with reality of course.

[Torie]

Can someone more knowledgeable than me discuss whether the Cameron government will be able to last the entire five year term, assuming the usual by-election losses one would anticipate?  Can they assume support from the DUP and the handful of LDs?

The majority is large enough that it's loss over the course of the parliament is not certain, but is small enough that it is not unlikely. Whether it lasts for the full course of this parliament depends to a considerable extent on luck.

On the second point, certainly not. The DUP have no love for the Tories and would demand payment in exchange for votes. Lord knows with regards to the LibDems.

What "payment" might the DUP demand? They made reassuring noises during the election, stating that they were open to working with whomever to form a stable government, based on an informal arrangement, thinking their party too small for anything more formal.

[Torie]

What you interpreted as reassuring was in fact the very opposite. The DUP are a bunch of shameless political whores. So by payment I mean payment: they would ask for even more government money to be spent on Northern Ireland. Perhaps a new road for every tricky vote or a giant statue of Ian Paisley in the middle of Ballymena.

Fair enough. What I read was some chatter about getting their income tax rate as low as Ireland's to compete, which has a certain facial reasonableness, but would be difficult to grant to them. As soon as the UK has different income tax rates for different places, it seems to me that things start to fall apart.

[Torie]

Well, there are about 32 Labour held seats where the Tories + UKIP had a majority of the vote, and about 45 if one tacks on 50% of the LD vote to the total. One can assert that the bulk of the UKIP vote is not available to the Tories, but that post election Ashcroft poll suggests otherwise, and about half if I recall correctly have voted Tory before. Most of the seats appear to me unsurprisingly to be in the Midlands or the north of England, but my knowledge of the constituency names is of course somewhat limited. It would be great to map these, but that is beyond my skill level.

[Torie]

FWIW, here is Lord Ashcroft's post election poll.

A third of LibDem support was just tactical votes

Edit: and Labour actually won voters who made up their mind on election day as well as those who made up their mind a few days before

Actually, per my math, more than 3/4 of the LD vote were tactical voters trying to stop another party. 19% of the electorate were tactical voters. A third of them (34%) voted LD, or a tad over 6% (6.46%). The LD's got 8% of the vote (7.9%). 6/8 = 75% (81.18% to be exact - 6.46%/7.9% = 81.18%). With the Greens out there and getting some traction, I suspect that there is a substantial possibility that the LD's will just disappear. There is political space for only so many parties at any one time. The LD's never made much sense to me in recent years anyway. They had no real raison d'être. They have next to none now.

I am assuming that this poll has at least some nexus with reality of course.

No need to do math, it says the exact number in the poll itself. Look at question six, on the bottom right of the first page of the summary. When prompted with, "Here are some reasons people have given for deciding on the party they voted for. Which three were the most important in your decision?" it shows that 34% of LD voters said "I voted tactically to stop another party from winning" (and looking in the detailed results shows that 22% of LD voters even said it was their #1 reason).

One can assert that the bulk of the UKIP vote is not available to the Tories, but that post election Ashcroft poll suggests otherwise, and about half if I recall correctly have voted Tory before.

I would argue that Ashcroft's poll offers no rationale that UKIP voters can in any way be lumped in with Tory voters like you've done. It says 40% claim to be former Conservative voters but it also says 25% are traditionally supporters of Labour; page 14 of the detailed results shows that only 37% of 2015 UKIP voters were 2010 Tory voters. I honestly doubt that the Conservative Party could realistically win over very many of the UKIP voters who haven't voted for them in the past, especially considering there's probably a significant class divide there. Even if Labour fails to win them back, I imagine they're much more likely to either keep casting protest votes or become disillusioned non-voters than they are vote Conservative.

I doubt there is that much of a class divide with UKIP voters. More on them is here, here, and here. They strike me as just the type of voter that the Dems have tanked with in the US - older, white, more male, working working or lower middle class, not particularly well educated, not in a union or making their living off government, not living in big cites, and uncomfortable with persons of color and immigration. We shall see.

[Torie]

Manchester Gorton in interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Gorton_%28UK_Parliament_constituency%29

LAB is +17 while Green is +7 while LD is -28.  Looks like most of LD vote sent to LAB or Green while LAB leaked very little votes to UKIP.  Other than LAB everyone else is in single digits. 

The UKIP was generally weak in larger inner cities is my impression. Outside that zone, I suspect the leak from LAB to UKIP was substantially greater.

[Torie]

The UKIP was generally weak in larger inner cities is my impression. Outside that zone, I suspect the leak from LAB to UKIP was substantially greater.

No one writes 'The UKIP'.

Anyway, outside of Kent and Essex there doesn't appear to have been substantial leakage of 2010 Labour support to the Kippers.

Well, the post election Ashcroft poll figures are off a bit from the actual results, with the Tory vote a bit low, and the UKIP vote a bit high, with Labour about spot on, but per his figures, about 7.7% of those who said they voted Labour in the previous election (26% of the electorate), voted UKIP this time ((14% x 14%)/26% = 1.96%/26% = 7.7%).  The figure is more like 13.5% for those who say they generally vote Labour, suggest a drain over the previous two elections, and/or a bigger drain from those who say they generally vote Labour in local elections, or something.  Labour does seem to have a problem with lower SES white voters, as suggested by the New Statesmen article linked above. Perhaps the drain is more pronounced where you suggest it is. As time passes, Labour seems to be more and more like the Democrats in the US as to its base. Not only the economy, but politics as well, seems to be globalizing, perhaps, at least in the Anglosphere.

[Torie]

If I ever become PM, I would force all election results to be counted at ward level for better maps.

Excellent idea.

It would also mean that the elections themselves would be better understood (see above).

There is an argument to be made that providing politicians with such information is a bad idea. It potentially provides fuel for rather cynical voter and manipulation, not to mention as to how to draw the lines, although Britain is the City on the Hill as compared to the US on that one, which is pretty much a cesspool.

[Torie]

so if I'm understanding the chart right, the only party that attracted a meaningful number of new voters was UKIP? (As in, they have more people with + signs in their block than the sum of people that flowed to them from elsewhere)

The 3 excess plusses is explained by:

"The UKIP group of 13 voters includes three voters who previously voted for other minor parties such as the BNP in 2010, but these voters are not shown on the diagram."

[Torie]

It's interesting that one of the biggest spikes to the Tories were BME's.