United Kingdom General Elections: December 12th, 2019

[parochial boy]

France is a bit different in that its party system is weaker to begin with - ie formerly major players like the Radicals, UDF or even SFIO could dissapear off the face of the earth. In the UK, the Liberals have been almost dead on a couple of occasions, but always slithered back into existence. In that respect, no matter what, I think a future period of opposition; adjustment to new, ehm, realities; the old governing instruments and a degree of the electorate's short memories will mean the Tories will come back and win future elections. The bigger structural worry for the Conservative party is probably the ageing and declining activist base; coupled with the risk it gets tken over by hard right entryists.

[parochial boy]

Some polls recently showing big Tory headline leads also have a near tie in their basic findings before likelihood to vote is taken to account.

That would seem to indicate that the pollsters' sampling collectively is still crap, and they know it, and are trying to re-weight to get a "credible" looking score. Which makes it impossible to know who might be the "most" accurate; and tbh, just means they are going to continue coming out with crap until they can address the root problem which is their inability to get the sampling right.

Incidentally, would it be possible to like, ban anyone with a US IP address from posting in this thread or something?

[parochial boy]

see what you wanna see innit

[parochial boy]

Incidentally, has anyone ever (tried to) poll overseas voters?

Obviously, there is no way you'd ever know how they vote seeing as they just get subsumed into home constituencies - but I was reading the other day that, as a result of various efforts, the number of overseas registered voters has jumped from  about 50'000 to 300'000 in the last 4/5 years - and that's almost starting to be a somewhat marginally relevant voting bloc.

[parochial boy]

Incidentally, has anyone ever (tried to) poll overseas voters?

Obviously, there is no way you'd ever know how they vote seeing as they just get subsumed into home constituencies - but I was reading the other day that, as a result of various efforts, the number of overseas registered voters has jumped from  about 50'000 to 300'000 in the last 4/5 years - and that's almost starting to be a somewhat marginally relevant voting bloc.

I have not seen a poll, but my guess is that most lean Conservative. While there is a very vocal anti-brexit crowd among the Central European Diaspora, they are outnumbered by a far larger number of British Citizens living in Australia, Canada and the US, who could be expected to be rather more sympathetic to the whole Brexit Empire Commonwealth nostalgia. And the largest group of Expats on the Continent are in retiree-heavy Spain, and that is a highly pro-tory age group. Anecdotal, of course, but I seem to remember an Interview that the BBC did with them before the Referendum and many of them seemed to be highly supportive of leave, seemingly oblivious to the consequences it would have for them personally.

Perhaps this is the Reason why the Conservatives have traditionally been supportive of demands to allow votes for life for British living abroad, while the Labour Party has been opposed (despite wanting to extend the franchise to other groups); they suspect that overseas voters lean conservative.
Or perhaps it could be rather a more old fashioned tory idea of an ethnic bond of all British people, and allowing overseas Citizens to vote is a a way of 'preserving their connection to the motherland'.

Yeah, that makes intuitive sense - but my thinking on that is that; firstly, 300k is only a small proportion of the British diaspora as a whole - and without knowing whether registered voters are more concentrated among certain communities than others it's hard to be able to tell beyond that.

Adding to that, I believe a fair few of the spanish-retirees still maintain UK residencies and the right to vote at home, and I would imagine that the US/Aus/Canada communities probably combine a lot of people who have been in those countries for decades and therefore lost the right to vote - and that the newcomers, owing to immigration restrictions of the 21st century, will likely be overwhelmingly highly educated professionals. Ie the class who tend to be broadly "liberal" ideologically and allegedly decamping from the Tories en masse. (and I imagine there is a solid - immigrant who naturalised British and has now returned to their country of origin demographic too; particularly famously in parts of Pakistan).

[parochial boy]

Wait, there's a debate tonight? You all have my deepest sympathies

[parochial boy]

The vast majority of what I have seen post-debate seems to be more about the Tories' "Fact Checking" rather than anything that was actually said during. Is that broadly how it is going down overall, or just left wing bubble-ism?

[parochial boy]

A notable feature of constituency polling thusfar is that with the exception of the Gedling poll, they have all shown significantly larger absolute or relative declines (i.e. where the drops have been lower in percentage-point terms, they have been in constituencies where the vote was lower to start with; often a higher proportion of the vote in such seats is shown as lost) in Labour support than suggested by national polling at the time they were conducted. Given the diversity of constituency polled, this is, how shall we say, something of a red flashing light as to their likely accuracy.

Or universal swing isn't going to be as applicable as it has been in the past. I have long expected the Referendum results to be a be a predictor of swings, though the results won't mirror the brexit vote, obviously. We had polls from the uber-remain wealthy strip of tory London and Cambridge, and surprise the LDs are surging in these remain strongholds to some degree at the expense of both majors. We have had polls of Workington and now Grimsby and both confirmed the parties that are campaigning on Brexit are doing good in the harder Leave seats. So where is labour holding up under these Brexit-weighted models: their urban safe seats. These places are the home  of the modern working class, urban visible minorities, and to borrow a term from Canada, ABC voters. Makes sense considering Momentum and their youth-focused campaign is naturally going to do better in the  places where the  youth are congregating.

But, of course, obvious worries about constituency polls MOE and accuracy are obvious.

Portsmouth South, Cambridge, Reading West (ok, the students are mostly in Reading East but still...) are all good examples of urban constituencies with big student/youth votes, and yet all have labour collapsing by 20 odd points.

And the UK isn’t Canada. There just isn’t enough of an ethnic minority population (esp given the BJP’s naked targetting of Hindu voters) or enough people in the successful liberal cities (considering quite a few big cities like Birmingham and Sheffield voted for Brexit after all) for the maths to really work out.

[parochial boy]

A notable feature of constituency polling thusfar is that with the exception of the Gedling poll, they have all shown significantly larger absolute or relative declines (i.e. where the drops have been lower in percentage-point terms, they have been in constituencies where the vote was lower to start with; often a higher proportion of the vote in such seats is shown as lost) in Labour support than suggested by national polling at the time they were conducted. Given the diversity of constituency polled, this is, how shall we say, something of a red flashing light as to their likely accuracy.

Or universal swing isn't going to be as applicable as it has been in the past. I have long expected the Referendum results to be a be a predictor of swings, though the results won't mirror the brexit vote, obviously. We had polls from the uber-remain wealthy strip of tory London and Cambridge, and surprise the LDs are surging in these remain strongholds to some degree at the expense of both majors. We have had polls of Workington and now Grimsby and both confirmed the parties that are campaigning on Brexit are doing good in the harder Leave seats. So where is labour holding up under these Brexit-weighted models: their urban safe seats. These places are the home  of the modern working class, urban visible minorities, and to borrow a term from Canada, ABC voters. Makes sense considering Momentum and their youth-focused campaign is naturally going to do better in the  places where the  youth are congregating.

But, of course, obvious worries about constituency polls MOE and accuracy are obvious.

Portsmouth South, Cambridge, Reading West (ok, the students are mostly in Reading East but still...) are all good examples of urban constituencies with big student/youth votes, and yet all have labour collapsing by 20 odd points.

And the UK isn’t Canada. There just isn’t enough of an ethnic minority population (esp given the BJP’s naked targetting of Hindu voters) or enough people in the successful liberal cities (considering quite a few big cities like Birmingham and Sheffield voted for Brexit after all) for the maths to really work out.

Students =/= Youth vote. It was brought up during the debate over the election date that about 75% of students are registered in their home constituency. Universities get their hues more from the staff, long-term researchers, and the surrounding university-serving communities that reflect their clientele's political views. Look more for the constituencies the youth move to after graduation. 

Reading and Cambridge would be excellent examples of those sorts of places - thriving service/it oriented job markets that employ lots of graduates

[parochial boy]

In glamorous Bury this weekend so had the chance to watch the Question Time thingy and er, Jo Swinson, yikes....

Also, genuinely amazed that there seem to be absolutely no signs of an impending election anywhere. Like no yard signs, posters, nothing. It’s almost a bit dystopian it’s so absent

[parochial boy]

Sheffield though. It may be a big safe Labour city, but it’s hardly a Manchester, or even a Leeds. It’s still a city that voted for Brexit, is still in many ways struggling with the decline of employment in the steel industry - and for all it has the students and stuff round Broomhill or Ecclesall, it’s also got places like Hillsborough or Attercliffe that are a good fit for that « northern working class left behind » type voter who we are told voted Brexit and are deserting Labour in droves. Not all big urban areas are alike (and if the tories are still cancer in south yorks there’s a reason for it of course)

[parochial boy]

Could I just make the point that The. UK. Does. Not. Have. Ridings.

Thanks

[parochial boy]

One random thought’. Supposing SNP gains but also a Tory majority; you’re potentially heading towards a Catalan style constitutional crisis where Johnson refuses to sanction indyref2. I would have thought this was intuitively a likely enough outcome to be worth discussion, but seems to have evaded all commentary so far.

[parochial boy]

Honestly I'd love to see a Labour minority that needs Lib Dem support just to see the reaction of anomalocaris and other dimmer Corbynites. I wonder if it will be "You know, on reflection, I've never minded the Lib Dems all that much..." or "CLASS TRAITOR CORBYN WORKING WITH THE LIB DEMS!" Either way it will be hilarious.

Regarding Swindon, she is inevitable herself, but if the Lib Dems perform badly then I doubt she'll be leader for long. Personally, I think 20 seats or more she's fine, 15-20 she'll be ok in the short term but probably won't serve the whole parliament, under 15 she's finished.

Eh, what I will say is that I have lived in the UK for two periods in my life. For a year in Sheffield around the time that David Cameron came to power, and for a longer period in London - but with lots of travel to Hull and to various towns in the South Coast - around the time of the referendum.

I remember, not that long ago, walking down Bargate, which is the main shopping street in Southamption (not a rich place, but not an especially poor one in the grand scheme of things) at about 7 in the morning. In every single doorway on the road, there was a rough sleeper; which to me as a naïve little Swiss kid seemed like a shocking, almost unreal level of poverty so visibly, viscerally on display.

Anyway point being, the level of damage that the Tories have done to the UK's social fabric in the last 9 years is genuinely heartbraking to see from the outside - in terms of the utterly real, but utterly pointless human cost; of the lives ruined; of the hopes destroyed and the pesssimism that has settled over the country as a whole. And in that respect, looking at what such a radical a Tory government as the one that seems to be on the cusp of taking power would actually do, is absolutely terrifying in terms of the actual human consequences it would have. So in that respect, I would be delighted for the Lib Dems to prop up any Labour government; just because it would mean them no longer being in power. And what Britain as a society, as real people whose real lives have been made worse, and are going to continue being made worse, by this Conservative government, really needs is the Tories no longer being in power.

[parochial boy]

Ooh, Putney is the constituency I lived in, a perfectly generic cross-section of what Rich-West-London is like.

Aside from the yummy mummy brigade, I always used to figure that being just over the river from Fulham helped bring in a rather different "young graduate" crowd from what you get in East London; it's also ram full of South Africans, who I imagine are among the more conservative of immigrant groups. The only reason Labour are competitive, Brexit or not, is the massive council estate in Roehampton - plus all the purpose built and ex-council flats near the Common.

[parochial boy]

Part of the question is, compared to 2017, how much is people being terrified of Boris Johnson a motivator for people to turn out when compared to the enthusiasm around Corbyn that was present in 2017 and almost totally absent this time.

One thing I've wondered surrounding all the stereotypes and "analysis" in the media surrounding the last few years in UK politics. Basically all the discussion revolves around the triangle ofolder, working class people in the provinces; younger graduates in big cities; and middle-aged middle class people in comfortable suburbs. Yet, a pretty solid majority of people under the age of 35 are not university educated, and presumably a lot of them don't live in London, Manchester or Bristol; and yet everyone behaves as if such a person could not possibly exist?

[parochial boy]

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?

Just a hunch but I think 2005 saw a chunk of the Labour vote Lib Dem over Iraq whilst also seeing a still significant swing to the Tories, but not enough to get rid of enough seats to deny the Tories a majority.

If I was a Labour MP in 2005 in a marginal seat I'd have a hospital and tons of schools to point to on my leaflets There's a reason a lot of the 1997 intake retired in 2010 when the economy went down the pan.

It's actually fairly impressive how the Labour vote completely fell off a cliff in a lot of those southern marginals in 2010. I think there's been a fair bit of demographic change too, like Medway or the Thames Estuary are not so solidly working class in the way they used to be.

[parochial boy]

The real important question is what is the British-African-American vote doing? 🤔

[parochial boy]

The real important question is what is the British-African-American vote doing? 🤔

Black British vote heavily Labour.  While not divided by each race, they use the term BAME which is Black, Asian, and Middle Eastern and most polls show Labour in low 60s, while Tories in low 20s.  Off course within those groups you get variation.  I believe the Chinese community favours the Tories, but they are small enough only have a minor impact, while South Asians and Blacks who are the main non-white groups, they heavily favour Labour.  Its a big problem for the Tories in metropolitan areas.  Also if turnout is high enough could save some of the Birmingham suburban seats as well as some marginals in West Yorkshire that have large BAME populations yet voted heavily leave.

The question might not have been entirely serious

[parochial boy]

Aha, very funny Comres, very funny.

[parochial boy]

Yeah, so when Irish reunification happens, is there any chance of Liverpool joining too?

England doesn't deserve them

[parochial boy]

The problem with Labour’s Brexit position was really quite simple. They were simultaneously too leave, too remain and too ambiguous.

Although it’s a moot point, they’re Brexit position could have been « flying unicorns » and it wouldn’t have fixed the fundamental fact that people hated Corbyn.

[parochial boy]

I'd be hesistant to overstate the influence of the tabloids. That is, the vast majority of non-geriatrics read neither the Sun nor the Mirror, and their continued influence broadly comes down to their ability to set the agenda that the rest of the media (TV news in particular) follow. And it's not as if Scousers are less inclined to watch TV...

Possibly you also have some degree of the impact of Thatcherism on the city, including the way that her government responded to Hillsborough; the final decline and death of Northern Ireland inspired Protestant Unionism as a relevant force in the city; even the fact it is a port city (you know, superficial similarities with Bristol here) with a very distinct identity. I'm not sure in any case, just speculating.

In that respect, it's also interesting that even after the much talked about disaster in December; both Lancashire and Yorkshire as a whole seem to have still trended left relative to 1997.