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

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And to-nite's YouGov: Labour 35, Con 34, UKIP 13, LDem 7, Greens 5, Others 6

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A salutary reminder that the fact that the SNP is home to some champion bullsh!tters should not blind us to the fact that, like all parties, it has plenty of people in it who are not now, and never will be, ready for prime time.

This seems like an hilariously terrible idea to me...

No, no, it sounds excellent. More of this kind of thing please!

Oh and a poll from TNS. For what that's worth. Labour 34, Con 32, UKIP 15, LDem 8, Greens 5, Others 6

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The upcoming YouGov poll is being hyped up.

They do that a lot.

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Most recent YouGov's have shown effective ties, so really there's nothing to confirm. Pollsters and newspapers that publish polls have really got to stop hyping the not-worth-hyping.

Anyway, full figures from that link: Con 35, Labour 34, UKIP 13, LDem 7, Greens 5, Others 6

Swing of 3% from 2010 (might add this to all reported polls from now on).

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Most people in England and Wales don't care much about Scotland (look at a map: why would they?) and their votes will not be influenced in the slightest by the future of the Union or the possible influence of the SNP in a hung parliament or whatever. This leaves us (forgive me for absurd overgeneralisation now) with a few pretty specific groups; a subspecies of old fashioned ultra-patriotic Conservative (the sort who unironically collect coronation mugs), people who are patriotic in the same way as the first group but who are not partisan and yet vote, and people who were born in Scotland but now live in England (needless to say quite a few were pretty apoplectic about the events of last year). The first group are not going to vote for parties to the left of the Tories, the second group are an important bunch of swing voters and the Tories are clearly trying to spook the hell out of them currently, and my experience of the latter group is that they tend to be pretty partisan for whichever party they support (which reflects the fact that a disproportionate percentage have military links or a connection to historic heavy industry) so probably won't be swung much; the Corby Scots don't need an excuse to vote Labour, for instance. Of course those who are more transiently out of Scotland are less likely to be hostile to threats to the Union.

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Most of the people who will be voting Green this time will have voted for the LibDems (not Labour) in 2010. I'm still not sure how they'll do in actual percentage terms, and it is worth noting that if they poll a solid thousand votes in a lot of places but no more, that could still be a lot of money they'll be shelling out in lost deposits.

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My thinking has been for a while to watch university seats: there could well be some substantial LDem-to-Green movement in many of those, particularly those held by the LibDems. Of course this will mostly be terrible news for the LibDem incumbents, even if not quite as awful as LDem-to-Labour movement. A loss of half a vote (effectively) is better than the loss of a whole vote, but...

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I almost don't know why I'm posting this as it's a) by ComRes and b) is a marginals poll (urgh). But because I'm good to you...

This is apparently a poll of UKIP target seats.* Results and changes on 2010 are:

Conservatives 39% (-7.3)
Labour 28% (+1.7)
UK Independence Party 21% (+15.4)
Liberal Democrats 5% (-10.2)
Green Party 4% (+3.6)
Others 3% (-0.8)

As all of these are coastal (well... estuarial in a couple of cases but that's close enough...) there's plenty of salt around to help those numbers go down!

_{*South Thanet, Boston and Skegness, Thurrock, Forest of Dean, Great Yarmouth, North Thanet, East Worthing and Shoreham, Sittingbourne and Sheppey, South Basildon and East Thurrock, and Castle Point.}

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This does not look very good for the purple peril at first sight, but surely those constituencies are too heterogeneous for this to be a sensible poll, even if the sampling is competent?

Well, yes. This is the classic problem with marginals polls. And this one (again) was done by ComRes. So it's probably entirely useless.

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Prediction: Yougov's poll tomorrow will show a 3 point Labour lead, thus returning us back to the beginning.

Con 33 (-2), Labour 34, UKIP 14 (+1), LDem 7, Greens 5, Others 7 (+1)

Sensational findings!

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Um...

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Briefing a favourable newspaper to the effect that 'despite what everyone else is saying things are going great!' is usually a sign that things are, in fact, not going well at all. As I'm sure all of yo already know.

Mind you, the Express these days is always a bit like a newspaper from a parallel universe, so perhaps in said parallel universe things really do look like that...

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Are they re-rolling the dice to make sure that the numbers look more in keeping with the pack or something?

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A company that has never done that is one that is committing fraud on a daily basis. As has been seen in America.

Nevertheless, Survation is a very sketchy/incompetent (no idea which, don't care either) outfit who's findings should not be trusted and that all psephology nerds should fervently hope goes out of business after this election...

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Wonder where BPIX are these days.

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I'd completely forgotten about One Poll! Thanks for reminding me of their (former) existence.

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Large parts of London (i.e. the unfashionable bits) are not exactly Green friendly and it's quite possible - at least as regards citywide figures - that they cancel out the areas that are very Green friendly.

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The Bristol 'West' figures are striking, but then that can't be an easy seat to poll so... mind you, that goes for most of the set chosen this time; e.g. Thurrock, High Peak and Colne Valley are all made up of quite distinct areas with differing temperaments.

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The latest offering from Opium Opinium is: Con 34, Labour 33, UKIP 13, LDem 9, Greens 6, Others 5

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Farage has made sure to be very negative of Scotland as well with comments about shovelling money over Hadrian's wall and so on.

Every inch of which is actually in England:



Why does Farage hate Newcastle so much?

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Cameron can probably count on DUP and UUP support too?

Well, no. The DUP are happy to back either Labour or the Tories in exchange for MOAR MONIES. They would also prefer to operate on a conditional basis rather than sign any longterm deal (for obvious reasons). The UUP are historically more pro-Conservative but are basically irrelevant these days (they currently have no seats and are by no means sure to bolster that fine tally).

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http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2015/04/26/miliband-rules-out-confidence-and-supply-deal-with-snp

Miliband rules out confidence and supply deal with SNP

All politicians rule out such deals until they need to.

They do, but the peculiar nature of the British Constitution on the issue of government formation means that such arrangements are not as essential here as in other countries.

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Any sense out there on what is going to take place in Bradford West ? 

You would need to ask a Mirpuri Pakistani from Bradford (and ideally from Bradford West) to be sure of that.

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As longterm observers of Scottish politics will be aware, TNS (and I would be noting this if, as was the case a few months ago, they were showing figures at the other end of the spectrum) are not the greatest of polling firms and have a tendency to show numbers that at least look exaggerated in one direction or another.

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I'm sure someone will post the full figures, but Ashcroft shows Labour doing well in several UKIP-strong marginals...while being behind by 6% nationally. Either the constituency polls are wrong or the national poll is.

Cashcroft's national poll is as bouncy as hell. I'm not sure who he has doing it. But his constituency polls are by Populus now.