United Kingdom General Elections: December 12th, 2019

[Clyde1998]

I think it’s clear that the Tories will be the largest party. The only real question is wether they have enough to govern with the DUP. If so, they’ll have no problem passing their agenda for the next couple of years.

I think they’d have major problems passing their agenda with the DUP. The DUP isn’t ever going to accept the Tory Brexit plan, built as it is on essentially leaving Northern Ireland alone in the customs union. And if Boris “Get Brexit Done” Johnson can’t even pass his Brexit plan, what hope does he have of achieving anything else? Honestly, that’s probably the worst scenario possible Brexit-wise. No majority for a Brexit deal and no majority for a second referendum.

That was always my concern about having an election to try and resolve this - you just end up back in the same situation. Other issues have also become more important, such as health and education, as happened in 2017.

[Clyde1998]

The "this defeat was all about Corbyn" take has to explain why we got the very different results we did (in strongly pro-Brexit seats especially) two and a half years ago when we *also had him as leader*.

Now, it is quite likely he became (even) more electorally toxic in the intervening period. But given how differently "leave" areas performed in this election to "remain" ones, I can't help feeling this sort of ignores Occam's Razor. In 2017 we promised to respect the referendum result, this time we did not.

(or at least were overwhelmingly perceived as not doing so by those who voted for Brexit)

This enabled Johnson to run the sort of campaign that May had wanted to, but couldn't, last time.

In every case since 1983, the party leader viewed to be the most capable Prime Minister has ended up as Prime Minister following the election. Only Thatcher in 1979 was seen as less capable than her opponent, however the government itself was very unpopular.

Notably Johnson was seen as less capable than May was in 2017, however Corbyn was down even more since 2017. Johnson may have more popular among Leave voters than May; Ipsos Mori's crosstabs don't show referendum vote for some reason.

The regional breaks were interesting though:

Northern England: Johnson 44% (-5 on 2017 May), Corbyn 33% (-3), Neither 17% (+11)
Midlands + Wales: Johnson 46% (-5), Corbyn 28% (+1), Neither 15% (+4)
Southern England: Johnson 49% (nc), Corbyn 19% (-19), Neither 21% (+17)
Greater London: Corbyn 42% (+1), Johnson 33% (-13), Neither 17% (+13)
Scotland: Corbyn 32% (-22), Johnson 29% (+5), Neither 28% (+17)

There was net movement towards Corbyn over the Conservative leader in the places where Labour lost most of their seats. Obviously these are sub-samples, so have a wide margin of error (the VIs for the regions were in line with the actual outcome), but there's very little fall in Corbyn's rating outside of Southern England and Scotland. Even those who said 'Neither' voted at the same ratio as they did in 2017, a basically 2:1 to Labour.

I'm not 100% sure what to make of the regional variations in most capable PM compared to people's votes, tbh.
Ipsos Mori (Con-Lab):
2019 - Johnson 43%, Corbyn 29%, Neither 19%, DK 6% (+14)
2017 - May 47%, Corbyn 36%, Neither 7%, DK 8% (+11)
2015 - Cameron 42%, Miliband 27%, Clegg 6%, DK 25% (+15)
2010 - Cameron 33%, Brown 29%, Clegg 19%, DK 19% (+4)
2005 - Blair 40%, Howard 21%, Kennedy 16%, DK 23% (-19)
2001 - Blair 51%, Hague 14%, Kennedy 14%, DK 21% (-37)
1997 - Blair 40%, Major 23%, Ashdown 15%, DK 21% (-17)
1992 - Major 38%, Kinnock 27%, Ashdown 20%, DK 16% (-11)
1987 - Thatcher 45%, Kinnock 27%, Owen 13%, Steel 8%, DK 7% (-18)
1983 - Thatcher 46%, Steel 25%, Foot 15%, Jenkins 6%, DK 6% (-31)
1979 - Callaghan 50%, Thatcher 31%, DK 19% (+19)

[Clyde1998]

There were clear increases in tory vote, especially in cosnticuences there wasn't a Brexit party or where the Brexit party was weak.


Most leave labour marginals, Brexit party not a factor

Wallsall North

+4415

Stoke on Trent North

+2061

Dudley North

+5044

Great Grimsby

+3170

Mansfield

+7157

Seems to me like both things were going on. There were some pretty dramatic upticks in Tory vote totals in these types of seats, but also nationwide turnout fell for the first time since 2001 and turnout was generally lower in Leave areas than Remain ones.

Yes, both of these were definitely a factor. There is also times where we see turnout decline for a certain party and increasing for another. In these seats it could be the case (not necessarily) that the Brexit turnout increase, and the labour leave vote stayed home or voted for the tories/brexit and this allowed the tories to win throughout the 'red wall'.

It will be interesting to see if there are any figures on turnout by each party.

YouGov published some numbers in 2017, which showed that most parties had about equal numbers of their 2015 voters not turning out with the exceptions of UKIP and the SNP:

[Clyde1998]

Ipsos-MORI's breakdowns have arrived. They are far from perfect, but they are generally considered to be more reliable than those produced by other polling firms.

Anyway, here's the link.

These, thankfully, include turnout estimates. Only 62% of Labour leavers voted, as did 74% of Conservative remainers. Both Conservative leave and Labour remain groups had 82% turnout.

This supports the theory that many Labour leavers didn't actually bother voting rather than voting for the Conservatives/Brexit Party.