UK Election 2010

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Are you sure that the old boundaries might yet get used? Till when would parliament have to be dissolved for that?

The new boundaries, IIRC, become law (if that's the right way of putting it) this week.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So let's go with this rumor and assume that there will be an election in...let' say...May 2009. As of right now, what is likely? Labour majority? Hung Parliament?

Best not to assume too much about when the election will be. It's very unlikely to be this year (for several reasons), but beyond then, who knows? Westminster gossip tends to be largely wrong with a few correct bits floating around here and there.

As for the election result; well, a good guess at that won't be possible for quite a while. I would be surprised if the Tories didn't do better than 2005 (though how much better I don't know) and I would be surprised if the LibDems didn't do worse (though how much worse I don't know) but, as far as overall results go, beyond that much is uncertain. I'm not even sure if it'll be another low turnout election or not.

O/c, quite a bit about the next election can be guessed (such as the sort of seat most likely to swing towards the Tories and so on), but that's nay the same thing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Best not to assume too much about when the election will be. It's very unlikely to be this year (for several reasons), but beyond then, who knows?

How likely is it that it will be next year, in your opinion?

No idea

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What happens in the UK if there's a hung parliament?  Could either Labour or the Cons form a minority government, as in the current situation in Canada?  Is there any chance of the Lib Dems forming a coalition government with either of the other two parties?

Didn't Labour and the old Liberals form a coalition together in the '70s?

Not quite; there was a stability pact between the two parties for a while, but it wasn't a formal coalition and there were no Liberals in the Cabinet. When that fell through, Labour had a similar deal with the Nats (which in turn fell through following the defeat (or "defeat" in the case of Scotland) of devolution referendums).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Will RESPECT hold its only seat with Galloway retiring?

In one word; no. They may actually have a slightly better chance at getting an M.P elected in Birmingham than in holding Bethnal Green & Bow (although boundary changes f*** them pretty badly. Were it not for boundary changes, they would have a very good shot at a gain there).

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I doubt it. Kiddy politics is weird though.

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Yes. Whether they actually will is a different question o/c. Elections in rural Wales can be very strange.

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SDLP will hold most of their seats (maybe all?), and Lady Hermon has a personal vote in North Down.

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No. Not unless the electoral system is changed before the election (which is actually much more likely than the Greenies winning a FPTP seat).

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No.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Might be easier than if he ran again, actually.

No need for the word "might"... then again, who would they run post-Galloway? Word is that most of their Tower Hamlets councillers won't even be members of Respect this time next year...

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Yes, but even more so; and not just because Labour's candidate (a Bangladeshi as it happens) is a lot stronger than King was.

Well, Respect did get a number of councillors in Tower Hamlets in the 2006 locals so they do have a base to work from.

They actually did a lot worse than they had been expecting and trailed Labour by a large margin in Bethnal Green & Bow.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If an election was held right now I'd expect to see high swings to the Tories in London suburbia (writ large o/c) but good results for Labour elsewhere.
I suspect that that will be the basic pattern of any General Election over the next few years (which is why a Tory majority is more likely than it looks on paper, and why a large Labour majority is also more likely than it looks on paper). Turnout will be the key though.

Btw, how much of the LibDem vote in Scotland at the last General Election is likely to collapse into the SNP?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If Respect win a seat next election, it'll be in Birmingham, not Tower Hamlets.

Btw, there's a by-election in Shadwell (by far Respect's strongest ward in the borough) pretty soon. Labour are running Michael Keith.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Tower Hamlets is Galloway's constituency, correct? Is he going to lose?

His constituency is Bethnal Green & Bow (which is entirely in Tower Hamlets LBC). Tower Hamlets Respect is, slowly but apparently quite surely, in the process of fragmenting.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If Respect win a seat next election, it'll be in Birmingham, not Tower Hamlets.

Btw, there's a by-election in Shadwell (by far Respect's strongest ward in the borough) pretty soon. Labour are running Michael Keith.

I thought the new boundaries in Birmingham made it nearly impossible for Respect to win a seat there because Sparkbrook and Small Heath were being split up. Birmingham Hall Green will have a strong Respect showing as Sparkbrook is a Respect fortress, but I doubt Salma Yaqoob manages more than 20% overall in a seat with both strong (non-Muslim) Labour and Tory areas.

Right now, "nearly impossible" looks much more likely than them keeping a Westminster seat in Tower Hamlets.
Things might change o/c, but there are reasons to suspect that they won't (at least not in a way beneficial to Respect).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A snap election will only be called if Brown is a) certain that he'll win it and b) convinced that he'll win it by a large margin.
Otherwise there's no point (from Brown, and Labour's, point of view) in an early election. Brown is many things, but stupid is not one of them.

2. Labour cannot finanically afford to fight a general election; they cannot match the Tories in funding where it counts and need time to build a war chest and convice the party faithful. unions and donors to cough up.

Probably not so much an issue next year as now though. But things are enough like that to rule out an election this year (unless a nasty civil war breaks out inside the Tory Party or something).

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All parties need to do that.

Of course the problems each party has there is different in each case; Labour has an excellent skeleton organisation (most constituencies have active CLP's, even ones with very low Labour votes in General Elections) but only a few CLP's have membership above skeleton level, the Tory problem is more-or-less the complete opposite of that (quite a few Conservative Associations boast large memberships, but in large parts of the country there is no real Tory organisation to speak of).

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The figures from that Scottish Opinion firm seem a little odd (SNP 48%, Lab 32%, Con 8%, LDem 8%) though. Do they have a track record of any sort?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not many results in Wales were that strange; they actually tended to mirror the previous set of local elections disturbingly well (with a few exceptions here and there).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I get the impression that we are very, very unlikely to see a uniform swing in Scotland next General election. It would probably be best to look over the Holyrood and Local results and work out from there (in fact I might eventually get round to doing that meself).

Not many results in Wales were that strange; they actually tended to mirror the previous set of local elections disturbingly well (with a few exceptions here and there).

I would like to counter that view in the following constituencies:

Ceredigion: 2005: Lib Dem GAIN from Plaid 2007: Plaid HOLD

In the local elections of 2004 (as far as I can tell) Plaid led the Independents by about 2%, according to my assessments at the next locals they might lose by 6%.

Preseli, Pembrokeshire: 2005: ConGAIN from Lab 2007:ConGAIN from Lab

Just like Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire was an Independent HOLD but from what I can tell there was a fractional swing to Lab in 2004, which was reversed in 2005 and 2007

Well, there are always a few exceptions. I wouldn't call Preseli Pembroke much of an exception though; local politics in Pembrokeshire is insane (as you probably know the county is ruled by the usual good old boys network, rather like Powys or Anglesey) and has little to do with other elections.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Weren't the Highlands Labour prior to the advent of the SDP?

Dave

Caithness & Sutherland was from the '60's onwards (but that was probably as much to do with a personal vote for Maclennan (who o/c defected to the SDP) as much as anything else). Inverness was Liberal from '64 and Ross & Cromarty was Tory.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

One neglected nugget of info (although it is very difficult and sensitive to measure) was Labour's leakage of the working class 'protestant' vote to the SNP most noticably at council level in the 'weathervanes' of Airdrie and Larkhall and Irvine (Bridgeton held steady due to the Catholic vote in Calton; still difficult to prise them out of that 'funk')

Sectarianism is disturbing, but interesting. So...

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Larkhall results in 2007:

Labour 50.2%
SNP 30.3%
Tory 7.9%
Unionist (!) 6.5%
LDem 4.9%

A lot of Unionist votes weren't transfered, but those that were went:

Tory 38%
SNP 32%
Labour 28%

(and when the Tory was eliminated, transfers were something like 80% for the SNP)

Larkhall results in 2003 (from the three wards prefixed with Larkhall. No idea how different the new multi-member ward is)

Labour  55% 
SNP 33%
Tory  8.4%
LDem  3%

The same three wards but with Dalserf (which seems to have included the fringes of Larkhall so might be in the new seat?) added as well:

Labour 52.7%
SNP 35.2%
Tory  9.8%
LDem 2%

Not quite sure what any of that indicates, but it was fun to do anyway.

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Ah, I'm too tired now to do the others properly. Oh well.

Airdrie South; Labour fp lead over SNP of 143 votes, Airdrie Central; Labour lead of 161 votes, Airdrie North SNP lead of 406 votes.

Not able to compare with 2003 because I can't work out from the old ward map where Airdrie begins and ends. Most wards seem to have been Labour by reasonable-to-large margins, though one (Clarkston) went strongly SNP.

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And I can't work out Irvine because North Ayrshire council didn't put a party description next to candidate names on their websites.

Damn. 

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Indie was actually the former Tory M.P for the seat who left the party for some reason that I've never been able to find out.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Inverness
1950: Con 45% Lab 32% Lib 23% (Con win)
1951: Con 65% (+20%) Lab 35% (+3%) (Con HOLD)
1955: Con 41% (-24%) Lib 39% (+39%) Lab 20% (-15%) Lib 39% (+39%) (Con HOLD)
1959: Con 44% (+3%) Lib 33% (-6%) Lab 23% (+3%) (Con HOLD)
1964: Lib 40% (+7%) Con 34% (-10%) Lab 26% (+3%) (Lib GAIN from Con)
1966: Lib 39% (-1%) Con 33% (-1%) Lab 28% (+2%) (Lib HOLD)
1970: Lib 38% (-1%) Con 32% (-1%) Lab 23% (-5%) SNP 7% (+7%) (Lib HOLD)
Feb 1974: Lib 39% (+1%) Con 27% (-5%) SNP 18% (+11%) Lab 17% (-6%) (Lib HOLD)
Oct 1974: Lib 32% (-7%) SNP 30% (+12%) Con 22% (-5%) Lab 16% (-1%) (Lib HOLD)
1979: Lib 34% (+2%) Con 25% (+3%) SNP 21% (-9%) Lab 21% (+5%) (Lib HOLD)

Some fairly significant boundary changes here.

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Radical boundary changes here.

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[Filuwaúrdjan]

May I ask a question about NI? Why do the Conservatives run candidates in a few NI constituencies?

Complicated. Read this: http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/fnd95.htm

[Filuwaúrdjan]

For what it's worth, I'm starting to suspect that both the Tories and Labour will poll a higher share of the vote in the next election than in 2005 (which would be a good thing even from a non-partisan point of view as it would indicate an increase in turnout).

After the internal Populus poll showing a 1 point gap,

Which, for those that don't know, was a poll commissioned for the Tories.

IMO no poll published in the Silly Season is worth the paper it's printed on. All those showing big Labour leads have been nice to see, but essentially meaningless.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Worth bearing in mind that historically there are very few polls conducted in August anyway. 

And with good reason; August polls tend to be even more worthless than normal polls.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Could anybody tell me how the seat distribution would have been with the August 1997 poll average (Lab 56%, Con 26.5%, LD 13.5%, Other 4%)?

1931 in reverse

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Tory M.P for Croydon Central (Andrew Pelling) has been arrested for wife-beating.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Tory M.P for Croydon Central (Andrew Pelling) has been arrested for wife-beating.

It's technically called 'domestic abuse' - sorry to sound pedantic, but wife beating as a term just bugs me (particularly if the victim isn't married, is a man or part of a same sex couple)

Pedant!!!!11

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Btw, just a reminder to everyone, but it's innocent until proven guilty, as always. Posts that indicate otherwise will, of course, have to be edited.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, the rumours of an October election do seem to be growing again. And the counter-rumours continue to circulate also.
I suspect we'll know more soon-ish.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Was re-reading my copy of the Grauniad today and I noticed something in the last paragraph from Brown's article in it:

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