UK General Election Date Announced

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Eh, this just looks like meaningless speculation. Even the Blears remark says little.

Anyway, IIRC, didn't the Major government wait until the last possible date for calling their final election?  It's funny sometimes how history repeats itself.

More or less. And he called his first election late as well. Callaghan also tried that (and would have had not the SNP and Liberals been so stupid/suicidal), as did that Home in '64 and Attlee in '50. There's no evidence that doing so costs the Government any additional support, interestingly enough (while there's *some* evidence that the reverse is true of snap elections. Was certainly true in 1974 anyway).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The reason? The Budget. And possibly the lingering thoughts after the Treaty vote (which by themselves didn't shift the polls)

Eh, the one looks like a certain outlier and should be ignored. The other one looks *irritatingly* credible though and I can't think of a way to happily dismiss it while not being a total hack. Ah well.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The plus 3 for the Tories in both polls is consistent. So too is the minus 3 for Labour as a result.

The significant thing isn't so much the number but that it's a high (wrong word but it'll have to do) enough number to probably be more than a statistical blip. Tempting to say "wait and see" for other polls, but that's silly as most of the other companies just use ICM's data and mess around with it (slight exaggeration).

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Thing to remember about YouGov (and I think this is why they produce weird results more often than the rest) is that they don't really measure public opinion, but the opinion of a fundamentally unrepresentative (and not just in terms of demography, but in terms of interest) section of the public. O/c they then do all sorts of things to make the final numbers look more realistic, but I think the unrepresentative nature of the people they ask sometimes slips through anyway, especially if opinion (and/or interest level) amongst the people in their panel about something is very strong, or if the people from the underepresented groups are politically (or elseways) unrepresentative. O/c they'll never have to worry about fixing that until they get a General Election badly wrong.

Eh. I know what I meant to say anyway.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It would take a factional war to force him out and no one (sane) wants that. After all, 'tis better to maybe lose one election than to lose at least two, maybe as many as four. I like to think that that lesson of the '50's has been learned, even if it took the '80's to teach it...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

When was the last time a major party leader lost his seat?

Depends what you mean by major party. But for the three governing parties of the 20th century:

1. the last Liberal leader to lose his seat was Archibald Sinclair in 1945.

2. the last Labour leader to lose his seat was Arthur Henderson in 1931. Henderson (a great man) never did have much luck when it came to holding onto his seat for long. I can give you details if you want...

3. the last Conservative leader to lose his seat was Arthur Balfour in 1906 (he was back in the Commons within weeks though).

Former leaders to lose their seats when they've ceased to be leader have included a dog-lover and a bloody Judas.

All three major party leaders have nice big majorities.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Is Clegg's the most vulnerable?[quote]

Yes (of course). But even he be safe; 20% majorities don't usually vanish into thin air.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not going to comment on contemporary stuff until I've worked through some interesting census stuff (more on that at some point), but on a few historical points...

I'm sure that Michael Portillo once thought that too

Usually. The key word is usually

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True o/c

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I have to disagree here; in many working class areas (typically the sort that mirror closely areas full of "Reagan Democrats" in the States) 1987 was worse for Labour than 1983. What you had in 1987/92 was, on the one hand, the final collapse of the once large traditional Working Class Tory vote in old industrial areas and a steady erosion of support amongst the professional section (especially in the public sector) of the middle class and on the other a big increase in Labour support amongst low-ish income white collar workers (much of which was taken directly from the Alliance). I think this is shown off quite well by the fact that after 1992 Hornsey and Cambridge had Labour M.P's while and Edmonton and Batley didn't (which seems as absurd now as it would have done a decade before 1992). In many respects voting patterns here were becoming much more American.