Why were the Conservatives (UK) unable to win a majority in 2010?

[Blair]

There's a mythology in Labour that the ground game in the election stopped a majority; I don't know how true this is but there's certainly a handful of seats where the Labour vote was dragged out.

Peter Mandelson and others had stablised the party in terms of its messaging; there was a period between 08-09 when the party was facing a complete rout.

You still hear some tories blame Cameron for his failure; he'd done well in modernising the party & the message but he never reached Blair/Thatcher levels in terms of his crossover into seats that shouldn't be supporting him. I was of course too young to follow it closely in the way that helps but I seem to recall he was seen to have had an average campaign?

The one thing I can remember is that it was expected that there was a high chance the next Parliament would be a hung one.

Although his gain of 96 seats is still one of the highest for the party for years- ultimately it was an extremely big hurdle for the party to pick up those extra seats, when as others have said you had still had the Scottish firewall for Labour & the Liberal stronghold in the South West.

It meant the Tories were targetting seats like Tooting & Hampstead for a majority.

To think aloud this has made me realise how much our electoral map has changed in the last 10 years; surely the differences between 2010, 2015, 2017 & 2019 are of the biggest & most erractic set of changes without a change in the franchise?

[Blair]

To think aloud this has made me realise how much our electoral map has changed in the last 10 years; surely the differences between 2010, 2015, 2017 & 2019 are of the biggest & most erractic set of changes without a change in the franchise?

And as the shifts between elections have not been in any one firm direction each time, well, we can expect this to continue. Of course none of this should really be a surprise: social surveys show that less than half of the electorate has any identification with any party and that those voters who do are more conditional in their support than was once the case. It might now be useful for observers of British politics to pay closer attention to how elections work in Canada...

Very true & both Brexit+Scottish Independence proved to be bulldozers which helped to erase long time loyalities; although I'm actually less clear on Scotland after the last set of results- the Scottish Parliamentary elections will be interesting next year.

[Blair]

It's fascinating how many previously Tory held seats in 2010 now have Labour majorities reaching 10K while Labour held seats have Tory majorities of 15K (and a good chunk of these were moving this way before 2019)

[Blair]

Labour had been in power for 13 years, Brown was unpopular and uncharismatic to boot, the economy was doing terrible, Labour had led the country to an unpopular war, and Cameron was a young fresh face for the Tories who had moved them closer to the middle of the political spectrum, plus he was quite good at communication. In spite of all this, not only was the election not a landslide, but Cameron failed to even win an overall majority. Why was this?

Idk why so many of you peddle this historical revisionism... people still seen him as a posh boy/Tory toff.

I always wondered how effective an attack line this was; I remember Brown's point about the a tax plan being drawn up 'on the playing fields of Eton' but yeah Cameron did actually do very well at winning over affluent parts of the country- especially in London.

[Blair]

I always assumed it was because unionist tactical voting was at a record high in 2017 & the unpopularity of Boris Johnson certainly dragged down some of the Scottish Tories (they were always the group who hated Boris the most & expected to be back down to 1 in Scotland)

With regards to Labour I always assumed 2017 in Scotland saw a perfect tide; record high student voting, white traditional voters not being completely repelled & a freedom to vote how you wanted. I don't believe it was solely Brexit (apples & oranges I know but remain voters generally came back quite heavily during the campaign)

Again this is the type of thing I'd like to see polling on because it's just my own assumptions & snippets I've heard