United Kingdom General Elections: December 12th, 2019

[Pericles]

https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1198360854959403010

Looks like turnout will be high this election as people consider it important.

Surely this bodes better for Labour then it does for the Tories?

Perhaps, the EU referendum was the highest turnout vote in decades and like 6% higher turnout than the 2015 election, but that didn't mean Remain did well. On the other hand, the 2017 election was also high turnout by UK standards, and also higher turnout from 2015 and Labour did better than 2015.

[Pericles]

Also remember the LibDems ended this parliament with 20 MPs and brought on this election to try and get more MPs, it would be ironic if (as seems pretty likely) they end up with less MPs than they went in with.

This, plus Jo Swinson running a leader focused campaign despite being unappealing to the public and not suitable for such a campaign (and ends up dropping in the polls in that campaign) could mean Swinson ends up being the Theresa May of the 2019 election.

[Pericles]

Another ComRes: Con 41, Lab 34, LDem 13, BP 5, Others 7

_{Fieldwork 25th and 26th.}

What is the trend in that poll?

[Pericles]

If these polls bear fruit, this is one lesson to my fellow Americans in this thread: BERNIE CANNOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BE THE NOMINEE.

Lol. If anything Corbyn was inconsistently left-wing and is hurt far more by being centrist on the issue of Brexit than being left-wing on everything else.

[Pericles]

If these polls bear fruit, this is one lesson to my fellow Americans in this thread: BERNIE CANNOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BE THE NOMINEE.

Lol. If anything Corbyn was inconsistently left-wing and is hurt far more by being centrist on the issue of Brexit than being left-wing on everything else.

Eh, I think calling the market-internationalist liberalism of remain "left wing" is a bit much. Merkel and Macron are the faces of the globalist impulse of Remain, and they are obviously more to the right than to the left. The farther left you go, the more Euro-skeptical you tend to get, for a variety of reasons. It's just that the Social Democratic left in Europe tends not to go as far left as Corbyn so we aren't used to seeing this.

I suppose but in Britain Remain vs Leave is pretty much a left vs right divide, most Labour voters voted for Remain and most Conservative voters went for Leave.

[Pericles]

I agree Opinium is highly unlikely to be right, but a caveat is that with recent polling errors, a pro-Tory polling error can't be ruled out and that would lead to a Opinium style landslide. In 2015 after all nobody thought that the Tories would win a majority, and in 2017 insiders in both parties thought even to the end that the Tories were headed for an increased majority. The conventional wisdom is not a reliable indicator. Of course this goes the other way too, it is entirely possible that the polls underrate Labour as in 2017 and that, along with potentially a late Labour surge, could cause a hung parliament (the YouGov MRP model makes that seem less likely and is concerning, but that was a snapshot of how things stood last week and even MRP is not error-free).

[Pericles]

Tbh it does seem that the Tories have run a better campaign than May in 2017 (pretty easy to do) and Labour so far has run a bit of a worse campaign than in 2017. 'Get Brexit Done' is super dumb but also effective. The leadership ratings are weird, Johnson seems to be slightly more unpopular than May was even at the end of the campaign, but Corbyn hasn't so far had much of a surge in his leadership ratings and is still deeply unpopular. Boris's leads in preferred Prime Minister ratings so far are slightly higher than May's lead in those ratings at the end of the 2017 campaign but maybe slightly lower than May's ratings at this point in the campaign. Perhaps those who hate both Corbyn and Boris will go to Labour, but it doesn't look good for Labour (yet) here. Of course we'll have to wait until the end of the campaign to get a full picture, but so far the Tories do seem on track for victory.

[Pericles]

It seems like the WWIII-present UK system is Labour wins a landslide once every generation, Conservative pluralities/narrow majorities otherwise.

Seems to be that way, though Labour has won some close elections. 2005 is also an interesting example, it wasn't close in seats and Blair got a 64-seat majority, but Labour only won the popular vote by 3 points (far less than the 7 point win that it took for the Tories to win their bare majority in 2015). FPP used to favor Labour, though in the last two elections it has favored the Tories instead.

[Pericles]

Everybody down one point, how on earth does that work??

The total adds up to only 90% which is far too low.

[Pericles]

Have Jews historically been a strongly Conservative demographic, or was there a big swing to the Tories due to Corbyn among them?

[Pericles]

https://mobile.twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1203004409304821760

The Clock is ticking down on Labour at an alarming rate. Corbyn needs to win the Debate tonight, and decisively so it would seem. If he makes it about Trustworthiness he can, I am convinced.

Or for this whole Andrew Neil interview, or there lack of, thing to fester

At this point he probably needs both.

[Pericles]

52-48?! This has to be some kind of sick joke.

[Pericles]

I'm surprised Anne Milton is doing so badly, I'd have thought a sitting MP would be more competitive. She supports a second referendum I think too. Was she a bad MP?

[Pericles]

https://www.twitter.com/britainelects/status/1203468992217833474

Would suggest Conservatives hold almost all of their seats north of the border, SNP gains mostly from Labour.

On this poll, entering it into Electoral Calculus the Tories only lose Stirling and the Scotland results are 40 SNP, 12 Tories, 5 LibDem and 1 Labour. There is the slight prospect of Tory gains in Scotland, if this poll slightly underrates them and they end up in the 30s they could gain a few seats which would be a big upset.

[Pericles]

As I said earlier iirc 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2017 has seen a lot of people who claim to hate the current leader turn out for Labour in the end- there's a whole range of reasons why, but there is always a chunk of the Labour vote that is both tribal but also hostile to the party.

It appears that 2005 really was about vote efficiency more than anything else. Labour only narrowly won the popular vote but swept most of the swing seats. Did disgruntled labour voters feel more free to vote for another party in safe seats than those who were in marginals?

Maybe Blair has a different take on this, but it doesn't seem like a 2005-specific issue. FPP from the 1990s until 2015 gave Labour a big advantage. In 2015 that changed all of a sudden, I think due to the collapse of the LibDems and the SNP surge, and now FPP makes it harder for Labour to win than for the Tories to win.

[Pericles]

Some fear that the Tories will destroy the UK.......

Just in terms of the union, Boris' deal means Northern Ireland is economically separate from the rest of the UK, with trade between the two being subject to custom checks and in some cases higher tariffs, leading to higher prices in Northern Ireland than the rest of the UK and damaging the region's economy. The fear of the unionists there is that this could lead to a political separation beginning to form and support increasing for Northern Ireland leaving the UK and joining the Republic of Ireland (which polls show is already starting to happen). There is also the risk that Boris' hard Brexit increases support for Scottish independence (currently polls show independence is just a few points behind in the polls). Scotland voted by 62% to remain in the EU, and one of the key points in the previous independence referendum was that independence would mean losing EU membership, while now independence means potentially gaining EU membership. That said, the complications of Brexit could  make a hugely more complicated political and economic separation look unattractive to Scots. A good result for the SNP would encourage them to pursue independence, though Boris has taken a hard line on independence, while a good result for the Tories could mean an underperformance for the SNP and would discourage them from pursuing independence in the near future. Still, Scottish independence's prospects, either in the short-term or long-term, of winning an eventual referendum would be higher if the Tories win the election than if a Labour government is formed, especially if a second referendum results in the UK remaining in the EU. I think the UK probably remains intact in the near future, but the risks to the union, especially in the long-term, will be higher if the Tories are re-elected.

[Pericles]

Haven't posted here all campaign...over the past few days I'm actually starting to believe a hung parliament is possible. With so many close seats and undecided voters it feels like the result is on a knife edge between comfortable Tory majority and some sort of minority government. Pointless to make a prediction.

Labour definitely have a bit of momentum going into polling day though.

If it is a hung parliament, this might be one of the few cases where 'late swing' is a valid explanation for the polling error.