Hard News: #GE2015: Proper Mad
173 Responses
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Labour have picked up 1 seat from the Conservatives: Ealing Central and Acton.
Also Burnley from LD.
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So you're not a fan of first past the post Simon G. Fair enough. But that doesn't deny that Labour have failed badly according to all expectations. Wiped out in Scotland and no real progress in England.
Point taken Russell but it does underline again the suspicion one should attach to opinion polls by and large.
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John Farrell, in reply to
Read my post.
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simon g, in reply to
So in the course of 2 posts, you've switched from "clear cut mandate" for Tories, to "SNP triumph".
The second is correct: the first was nonsense, as you've tacitly admitted.
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LD are down 3 seats - 1 each to SNP, Labour , and Conservative.
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I think UK (now pretty much just Anglo-Welsh) Labour need to get over their confrontational attitude to the SNP and Scottish nationalism in general.
It's not in the tradition of the party that granted India and many other countries independence last century. They need to accept that the degree of independence Scotland wants is a matter for the people of Scotland and that it's for England to work constructively to maintain an appropriate and friendly relationship through the transition period.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
proletards and toryscum
Now anyone want to take a guess why Labour isn't having a very good night?
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
I'm sure *they* don't think of the Great British Masses that way. I haven't lived there for 11 years and haven't supported Labour for longer, so I can't be blamed for their failings.
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The next talkback bore who complains about MMP in NZ should be locked in a room to watch the last 8 hours of UK results - and then explain how much better off they are.
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Yawn... Oh crumbs.
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Wow. 1992 all over again. Now if only Lush would reform, I could be slightly happy. As it is, though: what a grim result. Not unlike the last NZ election, really.
On a more unexpected note, our votes actually counted, as the long-time Lib Dem local MP lost his seat. So at least there's that.
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I feel so very sorry for Britain.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
Now anyone want to take a guess why Labour isn't having a very good night?
1) A horribly uncharismatic leader;
2) an electorate who don't see sufficient in-house-cleaning taking place after Blair shat on the carpet.Edit: bonus round. Dear Mr Clegg, that's what happens when you break all your election promises and hop into bed with a party the vast majority of the people who voted for you think are evil scum.
Double edit: Dear Labour, if you don't think you need further in-house cleaning, please take a look at Scotland.
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Well, I've learned that polling companies are rubbish unless its to do with Scotland, in which case, well.
Interesting to see Labour's vote share in London was soft too. Tooting stayed Labour but Khan didn't gain much, just a couple of hundred votes, so he is still well and truly a marginal.
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I think it was the scare tactics of the newspapers at the last minute. There was a lot of money thrown at it too. So the opinion polls may have been correct but it was all soft. There was also a very low turnout so who stayed at home? They didn't seem to have advance voting which seems to increase turnout.
Nobody has mentioned the royal baby effect but I wonder if that made people feel happy about the status quo, and fearful of change.
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Steve Todd, in reply to
We should elect our councils by an MMP type to elect councillors followed by the indirect election of a mayor by a majority in council (as the PM is “elected” by a majority in parliament).
Rich, MMP is entirely unsuitable for local elections in New Zealand, for the reasons given 20 months ago.
At that time, I agreed with you that mayors should be elected by the councillors, but I have since had a re-think. While I cannot tolerate mayoralties being filled by show ponies and national politicians looking for something to do post their Parliamentary careers (and using their high(er) profiles to practically walk into the job), I still believe mayors should be elected by the people.
A compromise, that is only suitable in respect of councils where STV is used, is to require all mayoral candidates also to stand for council. Once the councillor results are known, those mayoral candidates who were not elected to council, would be withdrawn from the mayoral election and their first preference votes transferred to the second preference candidate on each voting document. The mayoral count then takes place in the normal manner.
Under this proposal, councils would not consist of the mayor and x councillors; they would consist of x councillors, one of whom was also elected by the people to be the mayor. This proposal would likely result in show ponies and ex-MPs (who only want to be mayor) baulking at standing for mayor, because, in most cases, they will have no interest in what they would regard as the consolation prize of being a councillor, should they be unsuccessful in their tilt at the mayoralty.
It would also ensure that, in almost all cases, mayoral candidates will be sitting councillors who will likely have spent a triennium or two on council and will know the ropes before deciding to contest the mayoralty.
The reason why this proposal would not be suitable for FPP-elected councils, is that councillor votes given for mayoral candidates who were not elected to council would be wasted, in that they could not be transferred to another mayoral candidate. This would mean that those voters in mayoral elections who voted for a candidate not elected to council, would not have their mayoral vote counted. That, of course, would be grossly unfair, not to mention undemocratic.
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Ben Austin, in reply to
Various Conservatives I know have said they feel that the Conservative fear strategy re Scotland/Miliband was more useful as a get out the vote mechanism. Getting their supporters to turn out when they otherwise may not have.
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Also, Nigel Farage has come second in South Thanet.
This election result may see UKIP activists focus on electoral reform in large numbers.
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Less than 2% between Labour/SNP vote and Tories who are only on about 36% of the total vote. So with proportional representation would have been a much different story.
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Steve Todd, in reply to
Preference distributions are one of those apparently simple things that leads to chaotic behaviour (in the mathematical sense). The problem is that in the senate exactly which votes get allocated to a candidate and which get distributed matters, and some systems allocate fractional votes and some don’t, resulting in a different outcome for the election.
Moz, the various STV systems used in mainland upper house elections in Australia, are all very poor examples of STV; unworthy of the name, in fact. Were STV to be adopted to elect the UK House of Commons, it is very unlikely it would resemble Australian Senate STV.
Any true STV method would not include above-the-line voting, which turns STV into little more than Party List PR. I would envisage a Tasmanian lower house or ACT-style ballot paper being used, with fully optional preferential voting, as in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
I would hope they would use Meek's method to count the votes (as in NZ STV). That would eliminate all the horrors of Australian-style STV that you obviously know so well, and would give results exactly in accordance with the voters' wishes.
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Caleb D'Anvers, in reply to
Well, when you add 12% for UKIP, you end up with a very healthy and unassailable working majority for a Con-Kipper coalition, with nearly 50% of the vote between them. So yes: a different story, but not necessarily a nicer one.
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Caleb D'Anvers, in reply to
Interesting to see Labour’s vote share in London was soft too.
Really? My understanding was that London was one of the only areas of the country where Labour made significant gains in vote share over 2010, with some high-profile pick ups, like Bermondsey and Old Southwark.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
I think it was the scare tactics of the newspapers at the last minute.
I’m sure the newspaper proprietors and hardcore Labour partisans would love everyone to believe that, but I’m just not buying such a simple reason for the polls getting it this wrong. For a start, you can’t blame the London papers for Labour getting Daleked in Scotland. Or the broad reality that Labour just didn’t benefit enough from the Liberal Democrat vote collapsing everywhere else.
There was also a very low turnout
I think calling a 66.1% turnout (and the highest since 1997) "very low" is stretching it a bit, but it's certainly far from ideal.
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People just seem to looooooooooooooooooove voting for the same old same old more often than not these days. Seems like shit has to blow for change to happen.
Works both ways.
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Trevor Nicholls, in reply to
Dear Mr Clegg, that's what happens when you break all your election promises and hop into bed with a party the vast majority of the people who voted for you think are evil scum.
The Maori Party comes to mind too.
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