UK General Election - May 7th 2015

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Polls like that are trash. You people all read too many newspaper columns.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes I... cannot quite believe that he actually said that. This is not an affluent area by any means, even if it isn't culturally working class.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Constituency polling is basically junk, so, you know. But Itchen is a potential worry for Labour given the tiny majority and the retirement of Denham who, don't forget, has been the Labour candidate there since 1983.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Trying to 'project' seat results from poll internals (!!!!) is only marginally less stupid than trying to project from local election results.

Of course the latter is very common and has been for decades because most people who follow British elections obsessively are basically halfwits with calculators.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Regarding Ceredigion, forget that it contains two universities and remember instead that it is an agricultural constituency in Mid Wales...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Rhondda in 2001 remains the funniest instance to date, I think.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Also, why did Plaid win Rhondda anyway?

Two reasons. The main one was that the local (Labour) council had a poor reputation and was embroiled in various scandals (including a really bad one over a waste tip). There were local elections on the same day and said administration was heavily defeated.* The second was that a lot of Labour supporters in South Wales were unhappy at Rhodri Morgan being blocked as Welsh leader in favour of Alun Michael and decided to cast protest votes.

_{*The new Plaid administration turned out to be just about the worst sort of officer-led council possible and was in turn ousted in a massive landslide in 2003.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But not really as no one had ever heard of that guy.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Bercow is unpopular with many of his former colleagues on the Conservative benches, but with who else, exactly? He was supposed to be 'unpopular' in his constituency in 2010 too and clearly wasn't. I think most people who care about such things - even if they don't like him - regard him as an unusually effective Speaker.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Some form of regional government makes sense, but it's fairly clear that the regions should not be the current official ones (which are essentially statistical entities). Possibly it would make sense to dust off the Redcliffe-Maud report and then adjust accordingly.

Proposed 'Provinces' of England:



And the proposed local authorities that went with them:



Also proposed were additional authorities for dealing with the particular problems of large metropolitan areas. Yes, it was basically what happens when you let geography geeks design a local government system. The Heath government dropped it like a hot potato, of course.

An alternative would be to accept popular enthusiasm for the traditional counties and to work out small regions based on combinations of these, adjusted for the reality of modern conurbations, etc.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Labour won a majority of seats in England in 2005.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ah I see things that need to be addressed at some point. But first things first:

North East (based in Durham due to the Newcastle - Sunderland rivalry)

Durham City is also the historical sort-of capital of the region (i.e back when County Durham - when then included random pockets in northern Northumberland - was effectively a semi-independent state under the Prince Bishops) and also has the benefit of not being too far away from Teesside.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, you know my motto. Why put off till tomorrow what you can put off till next week?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

My suspicion at this point - and it's too early to have anything other than suspicions - is that results in Scotland will look not entirely unlike those of October 1974. Maybe not in terms of details, admittedly.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Labour don't need a landslide in Scotland to do well there in terms of seats; in October '74 the breakdown of votes in Scotland was Labour 36.3, SNP 30.4, Con 24.7, Lib 8.3, but the number of seats won was Labour 41, Con 16, SNP 11, Lib 3. At the 2007 Holyrood election Labour took 37 constituency seats to the SNP's 21 despite polling slightly less votes. Obviously in 2011 the SNP won way more, but that was with a 14pt lead.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Survation is trash. By-election bumps might be seen from the more reputable firms o/c, but ask the LibDems for how long those typically last.

(also have to wonder who exactly these 'experts' are and what exactly they've been imbibing, but that's really not important).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't normally hold with obsessing with polls this far out from an election*, but a YouGov done at the same time as the Survation poll shows Labour 34, Con 32, UKIP 16, LDem 9. For what that's worth.

_{*You'd never think it from the way the media covers politics, but the British electorate typically only emerges from its perfectly rational boredom with the political process once the Great Electoral Carnival gets rolling.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Though never forget that every other election is proclaimed to be the least predictable in recent memory.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I was just being playful...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Most parliamentary terms are full of weirdness. The whole Cash for Peerages nonsense, anyone?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A claim that has been made periodically since... what... the 1960s?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

To be fair, the way British politics operates has completely changed since the 1960s.

I don't know about completely. One thing that is very similar is the insistence that this particular moment that we're living in now is the most unpredictable time in politics that anyone can remember (etc). Most of what has changed, of course, has changed pretty gradually.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Greens have gone so far as to threaten legal action. Hilarious.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A Tory win in Taunton would count as a swing to the left...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Given that the exit poll at the last GE was more accurate than the campaign period polls, presumably.