UK General Election, 2017 - Election Day and Results Thread

[parochial boy]

Haven't read much about the causes of the SNP collapse. It seems to me that they have been so successful at being perceived as a left-wing party and attracting Labour voters that they have left a lot of space on the right and alienated right-wing voters... but then why didn't these Scottish right-wingers vote for the Tories in 2015 already? What made them move to the Tories this time?

Cameron being more associated with austerity than May maybe? May vocally buried Thatcherism during the campaign and if I'm right the Tory downfall in Scotland started with Thatcher. Maybe it saved her after all .

You guys are really overestimating how much of an impact May's rhetorical movement to the left on economics had. Just saying...

[parochial boy]

Haven't read much about the causes of the SNP collapse. It seems to me that they have been so successful at being perceived as a left-wing party and attracting Labour voters that they have left a lot of space on the right and alienated right-wing voters... but then why didn't these Scottish right-wingers vote for the Tories in 2015 already? What made them move to the Tories this time?

Cameron being more associated with austerity than May maybe? May vocally buried Thatcherism during the campaign and if I'm right the Tory downfall in Scotland started with Thatcher. Maybe it saved her after all .

You guys are really overestimating how much of an impact May's rhetorical movement to the left on economics had. Just saying...

I'm not? I'm arguing that it was merely rhetorical and not real all the time. And in my above post I'm talking about the SNP attracting Labour voters, not about the Tories.

Ah, I agree with you in that case, just noticed that you were having a similar debate about Kensington (which I think you're right about too)  and thought it was funny that the Tories allegedly moving left was coming up so often when it was barely even remarked upon in the latter stages of the campaign

[parochial boy]

The North West swinging towards Labour does stick out a bit; what happened in socially-liberal, highly educated areas of the south is understandable, but the North West sticks out from the rest of the post-industrial England as it hasn't trended to the right in the same way. Even in the EU referendum, the North West was much closer than the rest of the North and the Midlands were.

I understand that a lot of this is due to both Manchester and the extreme levels of Labour support in Merseyside (which is a curious phenomenon in itself), but Labour winning in places like Bury North is really something of a shock.

[parochial boy]

Ok. What the hell happened in Hove? Where did all these Lab voters came from?

Hove is basically indistinguishable from Brighton (especially now that no-one can afford to live in Brighton any more). And Brighton is the San Francisco of England

[parochial boy]

I know Brighton (though I think Hove is still slightly to the right of Brighton), question is where did this increase in voters come from

Student turnout being the same as turnout from everyone else for the first time ever. Same as in other very heavily Uni influenced constituencies.

Do many of the students at Brighton or Sussex live in Hove? best I could find is that 8% are in full time education?

I wonder if there might also be a combination of the EU referendum accelerating an already existing trend (Brighton and Hove was 69% remain after all - more than London), and the ongoing Southern Rail crisis meaning Corbyn's promise of rail nationalisation was particularly well received.

The North West swinging towards Labour does stick out a bit; what happened in socially-liberal, highly educated areas of the south is understandable, but the North West sticks out from the rest of the post-industrial England as it hasn't trended to the right in the same way. Even in the EU referendum, the North West was much closer than the rest of the North and the Midlands were.

I understand that a lot of this is due to both Manchester and the extreme levels of Labour support in Merseyside (which is a curious phenomenon in itself), but Labour winning in places like Bury North is really something of a shock.

Not really, no.  Bury North was a Labour seat until 2010 and had a very small Tory majority last time.  Labour also have the majority of local councillors in the seat and run the town well - Bury is a thriving place compared to most of the other Manchester satellites.

OK, Bury North might not be the best example - but the swing in the NW was much better for Labour than it was in Yorkshire, the NE or the Midlands; and in contrast to other old industrial elections the North West, both the smalle towns and the two big cities, seem to have held up much better for Labour (and the remain vote in the NW was much higher). As a whole, the region actually seems to be moving left.

I'm also curious as to why Liverpool is so overwhelmingly Labour (and so strongly remain). It wasn't the only city that was destroyed by Thatcher.

[parochial boy]

Liverpool wasnt a coal mining area though (a bit around St Helens, but not to anything like the extent of S Yorks other parts of Lancashire). It wasnt even a major manufacturing centre like Manchester. It was chiefly a port city, with a huge Irish immigrant population, so maybe that legacy has meant it stayed more outward looking?

I struggle to believe that Hillsborough would have had such a huge impact on local politics.

And yet Liverpool votes well to the left of other working class areas (80% labour, as opposed to 60% labour in Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds - lower than that in smaller towns like Dewsbury)

And Liverpool was much stronger remain territory than Leeds, or Sheffield, or Birmingham. Which are all wealthier cities. Even Knowsley voted to remain, Knowsley!

[parochial boy]

I meant to say it's left-wingerism is equivalent to coal mining areas (and even more these days).

Militant was stronger in Liverpool than other working class cities.

Football, plays a huge part into it, from Hillsborough to Robbie Fowler's support of the docker's strike, and the club being generally left-wing.

Liverpool is the most left-wing city bar Glasgow in the UK.

Yeah, that was what I was getting at. Liverpool is significantly more left wing (economically and socially) than other working class communities. Historically though, it did used to be a relatively strong area for th Conservatives, as it had a strong Protestant-Unionist tradition back in the bad old days of sectarianism.

They don't read the Sun.

Christ, if that's the level of impact the Sun has then it's absolutely terrifying.

I guess it's not just that people read it, but the fact that what they read in it influences the conversation they have, and winds up making things a lot more pervasive.

[parochial boy]

I mean, yes, it is. Al or another British poster can correct me if I'm wrong, but, but I really think it boils down to the fact that class is still, if not the, at least one of the defining factors of British political cleavages. It might have been a bit less true this time around (although Al actually suggested earlier that Labour actually made major gains in some working-class areas), but it's still way truer than it ever was in the US.

Class is a major factor in determining party preference etc in much of the country, but it has become increasingly hard to define and measure in statistical terms due to the transition towards a service-dominated economy. This is a problem that the polling industry and the political science community stubbornly refuse to deal with, preferring instead to insist that class simply doesn't matter much now because they're lazy and don't want to have to do hard work. Which is a tricky thing to reconcile with actual existing voting patterns.

A comment I made elsewhere:

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What is also notable is that there are striking house effects from polling firms in terms of what patterns relating to the above system are shown; this is really not a good sign as regards its usefulness.

What did you make of the Great Class Survey that the BBC did a few years ago? dividing people into categories like "Precariat" or "Emergent Service workers". To my eyes, it seemed like a decent attempt to update on the old classifications, maybe a little on the simplistic side, but that would seem to be an inherent risk in any attempt to chop people into generalised social categories.

[parochial boy]

Least deprived Labour constituencies in England, including all in the bottom four deciles:
1. Sheffield Hallam
2. Stroud
3. Warwick & Leamington
4. Sefton Central
5. Cambridge
6. Reading East
7. Harrow West
8. Wirral South
9. Leeds North West
10. Warrington South
11. Canterbury
12. Wirral West
13. Penistone & Stocksbridge
14. High Peak
15. Gedling
16. Enfield Southgate
17. York Central
18. Tynemouth
19. City of Durham

Interesting that those are virtually all University, Northern or diverse parts of London consituencies.

Of the two that aren't, Stroud has always had a bit of a hippy/arty reputation, but what explains Gedling?

[parochial boy]

If I have got my numbers right, out of 230 constituencies that voted to remain in the EU referendum, the results in 2017 were as follows:

Labour - 104 (+24)
Conservative - 77 (-3)
SNP - 35 (-20)
Lib Dems - 9 (+3)
Plaid Cymru - 3 (+1)
Greens - 1
Other (Speaker) - 1

Excluding Scotland; Labour gained 13, Plaid gained one and the Tories lost 14. The Lib Dems didn't make any net gains.