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

[YL]

Eastleigh an easy Tory gain from the Lib Dems, with UKIP third, a bit of a change from the by-election.

Carswell holds Clacton for UKIP, so they have at least one seat.

[YL]

Clegg has held Hallam.  I'm going to bed.

[YL]

Yes, to be honest Balls had become a liability and if Labour were going to lose some seats to the Tories, it was for the best that that was one of them.

Is it currently 10 Lab gains from Con and 7 going the other way?  I might have missed one or two, but it's clear that Labour simply didn't perform in the marginals, and that then the Lib Dem collapse has given the Tories a narrow majority.

Cable losing was the biggest shock for me.

[YL]

Any chance for the Lib Dems to hold on in any of Berwick-upon-Tweed, St Ives, or Wells?

IMO St Ives is unlikely and the other two are even less promising.

[YL]

Where now for UKIP I wonder?

Did very well in the NE of England; if they pick the right successor to Farage and Labour doesn't win back the white working class, then they could make a good number of gains in 2020.

At least in South Yorkshire, Labour actually did reasonably well in their traditional strongholds, with vote share increases often well above the national one.  (Even Rotherham, where Sarah Champion's vote share was higher than in the by-election.)  OK, in many cases this needs to be seen in the context of a relatively poor result in 2010, but still it doesn't suggest Labour have that much to worry about from UKIP at parliamentary level.

[YL]

Is this the first time there have been no Liberal or Lib Dem seats in the South-West of England since the 1950s?

[YL]

The result in Hereford (LibDem MP 1997-2010 and a longtime target and local government base beforehand) is quite something... Con 52.6, UKIP 16.8, Labour 12.8, LDem 10.6, Green 7.2

That's minus 30.5 for the LibDems.

Sheffield Central:

Lab 55.0 (+13.7)
Green 15.8 (+12.1)
Con 11.1 (+1.0)
LD 9.7 (-31.2)
UKIP 7.5 (+5.9)

The Lib Dems were only 165 votes behind Labour in 2010.

[YL]

The result in Hereford (LibDem MP 1997-2010 and a longtime target and local government base beforehand) is quite something... Con 52.6, UKIP 16.8, Labour 12.8, LDem 10.6, Green 7.2

That's minus 30.5 for the LibDems.

Sheffield Central:

Lab 55.0 (+13.7)
Green 15.8 (+12.1)
Con 11.1 (+1.0)
LD 9.7 (-31.2)
UKIP 7.5 (+5.9)

The Lib Dems were only 165 votes behind Labour in 2010.

Brent Central had a -35.8 fall for the Lib Dems and Edinburgh South -30.3.

Yes, I think Brent Central was the worst: a seat they held where they came third with less than 10% of the vote.  I think it must also have been the best Labour increase, +20.9.  (Hallam was +19.7.)

[YL]

Where is the successor to F & S T? ie. Where is the smallest majority in the country?

The smallest I've found are 27 in Gower and 41 in Derby North.

[YL]

Any idea why Labour had such an epic fail in Hendon, especially compared to the rest of north London?

[YL]

Normal service, it is fair to say, has been resumed in many, many big city seats, with the Labour vote rising back to at least pre-Iraq levels. Only major difference being that UKIP are in the thousands rather than the hundreds/not standing at all.

Oh, and sorry to bring up Liverpool Walton again, but it really should be noted that the Labour vote there was higher than in 1997...maybe in the other Liverpool seats too, but I can't be bothered at the moment.

The 2010 boundary changes mean a simple comparison of the seats with the same names may be wrong, but it appears that it's yes for Wavertree and West Derby and no for Riverside, and also yes for nearby Sefton Central compared with 1997 Crosby.  With the same boundaries caveat, several London seats appear to have done the same: Walthamstow, Bethnal Green & Bow, Hackney South & Shoreditch, Edmonton, Brent North, Ilford South.  And, of course, Sheffield Hallam (and probably some more where the Lib Dems squeezed the Labour vote in 1997).  Oh, and Bradford West.

Edit: some more (boundary changes caveat again): Brum Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne can take some consolation after the fiasco of his joke), Leicester South, Manchester Gorton, Blackburn.  And finally one which actually helped in the context of this election, Wirral West.

[YL]

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%).

From Table 9, the percentage of Lib Dem voters whose first reason for voting them was tactical was 22%.  From Table 12, the percentage who put it in their top three reasons was 34%.

They also, unsurprisingly, seem to have a high proportion of personal votes: 21% had a personal vote as their top reason, and 43% in their top three.

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As it's a poll on the 2015 UK election, and not the exit poll, this may not be a safe assumption.

[YL]

All the below are by change in percentage vote share.  Errors possible.

Best Tory results

Bromsgrove +10.2
Hampstead & Kilburn +9.6
Yeovil +9.6
Hexham +9.5
Brent Central +9.2
City of Durham +9.0
Watford +8.5
North East Somerset +8.5
Richmond Park +8.5
Somerton & Frome +8.5

Best Labour results

Birmingham Hall Green +26.9
Brent Central +20.9
Sheffield Hallam +19.7
Poplar & Limehouse +18.6
Bethnal Green & Bow +18.3
Birmingham Ladywood +18.0
Walthamstow +17.0
Manchester Gorton +17.0
Hornsey & Wood Green +16.9
Birmingham Hodge Hill +16.4

Best Lib Dem results

Buckingham no change (!)
East Dunbartonshire -2.4
Edinburgh West -2.8
Gordon -3.3
Argyll & Bute -3.7
Bradford East -4.2
Glasgow East -4.3
Cambridge -4.3
Na h-Eileanan an Iar -4.6
Ynys Môn -5.4

Worst Tory results

Clacton -16.4
Bradford West -15.9
Bradford East -15.5
Richmond (Yorks) -11.4
Edinburgh West -10.9
Dagenham & Rainham -10.0
Sheffield Hallam -9.9
Cambridge -9.9
South Thanet -9.9
Argyll & Bute -9.1

Worst Labour results

Glasgow North East -34.7
Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill -32.7
Glenrothes -31.7
Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath -31.2
West Dunbartonshire -30.0
Glasgow South West -29.7
Motherwell and Wishaw -29.2
Glasgow East -29.2
Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East -27.2
Inverclyde -25.6

Worst Labour results excluding Scotland

Clacton -10.6
Chatham & Aylesford -8.7
Rochester & Strood -8.7
South Thanet -7.6
Hartlepool -6.9
North East Somerset -6.8
Tamworth -6.6
South Dorset -6.1
Brigg & Goole -5.9
Wellingborough -5.9

Worst Lib Dem results

Brent Central -35.8
Sheffield Central -31.2
Dunfermline & West Fife -31.1
Hereford & South Herefordshire -30.5
Edinburgh South -30.3
Edinburgh North & Leith -29.3
Bristol West -29.2
Weston super Mud Mare -28.8
Glasgow North -28.6
Manchester Gorton -28.4

[YL]

And looking at the inverse where it was CON vs LIB, there seems to be no sign of LAB tactical voting for LIB.  Of course for most of these seats, LAB is so weak that there are no votes to tactical vote with.  But still the LAB vote went up across the board in all those seats from their very low base. 

So in this election, UKIP and CON were motivated and smart voters that had a particular result they wanted to avoid whereas LAB voters were not driven to vote smartly to avoid certain results.  Smarter tactical voting by LAB could have saved 4-5 LD seats from going CON.  But it seems mostly the LAB voters did not even try.

No doubt there was tactical voting by Labour supporters in those seats, just not as much as in 2010, for obvious reasons.

There will be other features related to tactical voting in the lists.  For example, I assume that in City of Durham, targeted by the Lib Dems in 2010, there was a large Tory tactical vote for them, and that went back to the Tories this time.

[YL]

Lab/Con swing in Yorkshire and the Humber, using Al's base map.  As usual with two party swing, some slightly odd things can happen when there's a third party involved.  NB the two highest Con to Lab swings in the UK were both in this region, and both involved a Lib Dem to Lab swing combined with Tories tactically voting for the Lib Dem.

[YL]

As mentioned in the UK General Discussion thread an electoral petition has been submitted challenging the result in Orkney & Shetland:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-32930488

[YL]

Ipsos-MORI's big demographic survey results are out:



All of the usual caveats apply, of course, and with that in mind I will point out that the figures are not as theoretically accurate as the sort of demographic exit poll data that most of the non-British posters here will be used to, but it's the best you're going to get. So please read with caution: in particular be really careful with the class stuff, because (amongst other things) the model used is kind of dreck.

However, if accurate it fits rather poorly with quite a lot of pundits' analysis of the election result.

[YL]

The polls also overestimated turnout.

I think they're always going to - ask the people who are more likely answer the polls are the ones interested in politics.

That, and people who are in fact unlikely to vote saying that they probably will.

However, I suspect that the pollsters' over-estimation of turnout may, in fact, have been a big part of why they got the election as a whole wrong.  If that's the case, it's something they need to work on.