United Kingdom General Election 2024 : (Date to be confirmed)

[TheTide]

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).

[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

[Blair]

And today Sunak has a re-election pitch that seems to amount to "things are so dangerous and scary that you can't risk voting for anyone else, but give us another five years - totally ignoring our record for the previous 14 - and everything will suddenly become wonderful. Honest!"

Seriously, who is advising him on this stuff?

He had a very telling rant about how actually the current problems are not a result of 14 years of Tory rule which basically admitted that labours framing is working!

[JimJamUK]

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.

[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

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[CumbrianLefty]

Wasn't there a general downturn in election turnouts in the 1990s, in developed democracies anyway - partly down to the collapse of the Eastern bloc and attendant "end of history"?

It was far from unique to the UK, that's for sure.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Wasn't there a general downturn in election turnouts in the 1990s, in developed democracies anyway - partly down to the collapse of the Eastern bloc and attendant "end of history"?

It was far from unique to the UK, that's for sure.

At least in Sweden there was a low point in 2002 when election turn-out was at it's lowest point, but after that it has been on the rise again, although dipped by a few points last election.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Wasn't there a general downturn in election turnouts in the 1990s, in developed democracies anyway - partly down to the collapse of the Eastern bloc and attendant "end of history"?

It was far from unique to the UK, that's for sure.

In the country most directly affected by that, Germany, turnout rose from 1990 to 1998 after having declined in the 80s.

[CumbrianLefty]

Wasn't there a general downturn in election turnouts in the 1990s, in developed democracies anyway - partly down to the collapse of the Eastern bloc and attendant "end of history"?

It was far from unique to the UK, that's for sure.

In the country most directly affected by that, Germany, turnout rose from 1990 to 1998 after having declined in the 80s.

Interesting exception to the more general trend.

Was that at least partly "Ossis" heavily turning out to exercise their new found democratic rights?

[Battista Minola 1616]

Wasn't there a general downturn in election turnouts in the 1990s, in developed democracies anyway - partly down to the collapse of the Eastern bloc and attendant "end of history"?

It was far from unique to the UK, that's for sure.

In the country most directly affected by that, Germany, turnout rose from 1990 to 1998 after having declined in the 80s.

Interesting exception to the more general trend.

Was that at least partly "Ossis" heavily turning out to exercise their new found democratic rights?

I don't think so, Eastern states had slightly lower turnout than Western states.

[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?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The issue wasn't taxation particularly, but rationing and other controls. Things were very difficult after the War: there were shortages of everything, the usual supply chains were completely wrecked for obvious reasons, the cost of the War had crippled the economy and, thanks to the very sharp rightwards swing in American domestic politics immediately after 1945 and the radical right-wing Congress that emerged after the disastrous 1946 elections, American financial support was not as generous as hoped.

[CumbrianLefty]

Earlier this week, Sunak said the GE *would* be this year (ie not 2025) For whatever that is worth.

(and it could still be seven months away on that metric)

[Pericles]

Labour's vote is becoming more efficient, as if a uniform swing wouldn't be bad enough for the Tories.

[Conservatopia]

Can we just agree that the graph above is a really weird and dumb way to illustrate this?

Almost as bad as the cartoonish "Swingometer" and "Path to Number 10" that the BBC shoves down our throats on elections nights.

[Torrain]

Throw it in the average, but man...
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1792556360913072303

[TheTide]

Throw it in the average, but man...
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1792556360913072303

39% was a pretty standard score for Labour in Scotland between the rise of nationalism as a significant political force in the 1960s and the 2014 referendum.

[DL]

If Labour were to beat the SNP by that big a margin in the popular vote I’m
Guessing they’d win the vast majority of seats in Scotland

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I would be careful about reading overmuch into any single poll and so on, though we can note that it's significant that figures like that can be produced.

[JimJamUK]

I would be careful about reading overmuch into any single poll and so on, though we can note that it's significant that figures like that can be produced.

Yeah, It's unclear if Labour really are opening up a clear lead (and a poll with the Greens on 7% and Reform 4% in Scotland is probably not going to happen in reality), but the fact it’s not just another poll bouncing around the MOE of even stevens is indicative of the slow trend towards Labour is continuing.

[CumbrianLefty]

Back in 2021, many saw the failure of Scottish Labour to advance in the Holyrood elections as proof of their permanent irrelevance. Only a relative few noted that maybe the real significance of that result was its marking the final bottoming out after a decade of almost relentless decline.

It meant they were still around to take advantage of any SNP misfortunes, and so it has proved.

[TheTide]

More speculation about an imminent election call in view of tomorrow's inflation figures. It almost certainly won't happen, but Sunak really ought to name a date in order to stop this constant cycle of speculation (which obviously isn't helpful to him or to his party), even if that date is circa six months away. This kind of thing has happened in other Parliamentary democracies and of course many countries have fixed election dates. In the case of 2015 it was known to a 99% certainty that the election would be on the 7th of May that year for years beforehand.

[Yeahsayyeah]

I don't know how anyone can look at the mess in the UK right now and think that fixed terms are somehow a bad thing for meh "political culture" reasons or whatever.