UK General Election - May 7th 2015 (The Official Campaign Thread)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

ComRes is trash and constituency polling is... well... a curates egg... but if (a huge 'if' the scale of which cannot be expressed enough) that's anything like accurate then UKIP are not certain of winning anywhere in May: not only is Farage their leader and only real 'face', but Thanet was one of their strongest districts in the entire country in the European elections.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If these are accurate...

They aren't. Polling companies are not good at demographic fine detail* and the ABCDE system is notoriously poor as a measurement of class (or any other social division for that matter). The Tories had some strikingly good results in some middle class areas in 2010 (particularly in the Home Counties) and also some rather unimpressive ones in some other places.

_{*And have only got worse since they started to mess around with sample data to get the 'right' results.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Accurate or not, it would not surprise me if class based voting in Britain is declining.

We've been told that it must be for decades, and yet the fundamental patterns of support for the parties most associated with class politics not only remain but show no sign of disappearing.

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Labour certainly don't; Labour campaigns are usually based on protecting public services and living standards (and more loudly so at present than for a while). Even under Blair it was only really the votes of certain sorts of middle class people that were aggressively sought after. Class, of course, is a more complicated thing than it used to be, but an understanding of it is as essential to understanding British elections as it was in David Butler's heyday.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We have a new Populus: Labour 33, Con 31, UKIP 15, LDem 10, Greens 4

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In Canadian terms, what the LibDems had built them selves up to by 2010 roughly parallels what the Canadian Liberals had been reduced to by 2011: campus towns a la Guelph/Kingston and the Maritimey "Celtic fringe"...

Broadly speaking, yes. And aren't a load of people on Newfies even descended from West Country families?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Actually, class-based voting was never as prevalent in Britain as one might have expected in such a society (though I guess there were significant regional variations). It never reached the same extent as class-based voting in the Scandinavian countries during the 50s and 60s, for instance (according to Stein Rokkan, who specialised in comparative politics). I don't remember the reasons for this, though.

Well, yes, in the 50s you had (lets use the classic examples) some solidly proletarian Liverpool seats with Conservative MPs while Labour held a bunch of not-particularly-gritty seats based on large market towns. Class has been the main thing since the 20s, but it has always applied itself in complex ways. Part of the issue was (is) that class in Britain arguably has less in common with the classical sociological understandings of it than it does with caste.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes, they do seem to be up very very slightly, at least for the moment. Of course even 10% represents a loss of a majority (!) of their votes from 2010.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A peculiarity of YouGov's methodology is that while they're probably one of the more reliable polling companies (though is this really saying a lot he mutters darkly), their internals are best left well alone.

Anyway, a blank Scottish map will be out by the end of the week.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Surely another hung parliament must mean the end of FPTP?

Actual quote from someone way more right-on and constitutionally 'progressive' than me at the time of the AV referendum: 'you know, I rather like dear old First Past The Post.'

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Constituency polling is a notoriously... aha... difficult... field for all pollsters, not just Cashcroft. And the Noble Lord had to edit some constituency polling results late last year due to errors if you recall (very embarrassing). Having said that, Stockton South as a better Labour prospect than those other seats polled seems to make more sense than what was shown last time.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Though we can usually say that a candidate who polls over 40% is 'unlucky' to lose and one that polls under 35% is 'lucky' to win.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No more than a small handful, I suspect.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

United Russia hold?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I thought The big 3 don't organize in NI? since when did that policy change

In the case of the Conservatives in the late 1980s (see ObserverIE's post) although before 1974 the Ulster Unionist Party was technically the NI wing of the Conservative Party. That particular weird little project basically folded by the middle of the 1990s only to be somewhat revived under David Cameron's leadership; the UUP and the Tories ran on a joint slate in 2010 with UUP candidates in some constituencies and Tory ones in others (none were elected). This also resulted in the last UUP MP (left-leaning Sylvia Hermon) to leave the UUP and to seek re-election (successfully) as an Independent Unionist. All of which was rather embarrassing.

Labour's organisational position wrt Northern Ireland is messy. Essentially there is a conflict between the Republican sympathies of many Labour politicians, members and voters over here (which meant that until very recently it was not possible to join the Labour Party if you lived in Northern Ireland), and the fact that most of the people in Northern Ireland who have an interest in politics Labour Party style are notably lacking in Republican tendencies. Before the fall of Stormont this wasn't a big deal because such people could just join the Northern Ireland Labour Party, which was entirely independent from the Labour Party in organisational terms but which had identical policies on most issues. After the NILP collapsed as the civil war intensified in the 1970s, the issue opened up again. The official Labour line until literally a few years ago was that supporters in Northern Ireland could just join the SDLP which, after all, is a fellow PES member and so on (when Kevin McNamara was Labour's NI spokesman - 1987-94 - this position was repeated with particular vehemence). Given that the SDLP is a Nationalist party this did not go down particularly well. In 2004 the small band of campaigners who had been very insistent on this finally got their way; Labour Party membership in Northern Ireland is now allowed. Except that (and much to the annoyance of NI Labour) they are not allowed to run candidates for anything.

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The Telegraph, The Times, The Mail and The Sun will all doubtless endorse the Conservatives, while The Mirror will certainly endorse Labour. The Guardian and The Independent will presumably call for a change in government although we'll have to see whether that will add up to an actual endorsement of Labour. The FT has natural Tory leanings but also has a surprisingly large Labour-ish element high up in the paper, so it's hard to call. The Express had seemed certain to endorse UKIP, but has been running more pro-Tory headlines of late which might indicate a return to tradition.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

(The by-election was won by Robert McCartney, who set up his own more or less one-person party, the UK Unionists.)

Adding to the weirdness: McCartney unofficially took the Labour whip at Westminster. Further adding to the weirdness: Sylvia Hermon (who defeated him) has done much the same thing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Their coverage has been so relentlessly partisan thus far that it seems unlikely.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Populus: Labour 33, Con 31, UKIP 16, LDem 8, Greens 6

[Filuwaúrdjan]

To be honest, I suspect that they would not have a lot more success than their Conservative analogues.

Probably not, but this is one of those issues in which the principle of the thing is pretty much the only part that matters to participants...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How much of McCartney's friendliness towards Labour outlasted the Good Friday Agreement and how much of it was due to his association with the likes of Kate Hoey?

I'm relying entirely on memory here so might be wrong, but IIRC he mostly stick to the whip (supplied to him by, naturally, Kate Hoey) until his defeat.

The Cruiser was also a member of his joke of a party, as I'm sure you're aware.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Didn't the UUP help prop up Major's later years after his majority dwindled to nothing?

Yes, but that was the standard bargain with Unionists (i.e. votes in the Commons in exchange for MOAR MONIES) rather than a rapprochement.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Let us pause for a moment and consider the lie of the land. Polls conducted after the (ridiculous) debate collectively show the Conservatives on between 30% and 36% and Labour on between 33% and 37%. The Liberal Democrats are polling between 7% and 12%, UKIP between 11% and 19%, and the Greens between 3% and 7%.¹ Most of the more extreme figures are from the less well regarded polling companies. There is a tendency in the media to look at this and say (as they have done for months) that the polls point towards another hung parliament. They do not. Due to the electoral system the relationship between votes polled and seats won in Britain is not absolute and is not something that can be securely calculated. Parties have won majorities with very slender leads in the past.² Mostly what the polls point to is a competitive election with an uncertain outcome. They also suggest that a large majority for any party is extremely unlikely. Any inference beyond that point is an example of using data to back up predictions already made, rather than using data to make predictions. Beware.

<sub>1. The Greens are running about sixty seats short of a full GB slate, which will knock their final vote tally down a tad.
2. And very occasionally have actually won majorities despite trailing: the last time this happened was in 1951.</sub>

[Filuwaúrdjan]

ICM are sounding a little embarrassed by the poll and are briefing that maybe people shouldn't be reading too much into it. Which is unusually contrite for any polling company, but outright shocking for one as congenitally bullish as ICM.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's worth noting that it is conventionally assumed that one in ten polls from a given pollster will be 'wrong', due to the unavoidable difficulties of getting a genuinely accurate sample and so on. I mention this specifically because the internals of this one are really screwy: I suspect that they (rather than the odd headline figures) are why ICM have suggested that salt is required before consumption.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Perhaps they broke a mirror or something.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

As I think I've noted before, Labour have a very good candidate in Finchley so a surprisingly good Labour figure there does not come as a shock. Anyway, intuitively most of those don't look particularly dodgy (just so long as you remember that even more than national polls these are indicative more than they are anything else) and do fit in with the pattern of better Labour performances in the North and London than elsewhere. Not sure about the Dudley South figure though, but we'll see.