2015 UK General Election campaign & aftermath discussion thread.

Not sure how big a factor UKIP will be. Lots of places in their Kent / Essex / East Anglia heartland they're polling relatively strongly (15%+) have massive Tory leads so there's no real prospect of vote splitting. There are a few (like Waveney) where they might cost the Conservatives seats but i suspect there'll be more cases of them pushing Labour into 3rd than contributing to the Tories coming second.

Plus Europe is not as big a deal in a general election.

Europe no, immigration (and any social problems blamed on it) yes.

I don't think UKIP's positioning itself as a "respectable" BNP has helped much for the same reason the BNP have not had much parliamentary electoral success.

On the Today programme this morning Gus O’Donnell (or Lord O’Donnell, as he is now), the former cabinet secretary, made it clear that there is nothing illegitimate about the second largest party in the Commons forming a government provided it can command the confidence of the Commons. Tories are challenging this idea, and it is due to become a central issue of debate after the election.

O’Donnell said that David Cameron himself had signed off on the rules that say the government does not have to be led by the largest party.

The question of whether it's legal (it is and always has been) and whether it's legitimate (a matter of opinion) are different but it does highlight how ridiculous it is that there's no formal constitution that can be referred to. Vernon Bogdanor will make out like a bandit in interview fees either way.

^^ Papers won't care about legality as long as they can insinuate.

UKIP's positioning has been helped by the massive amount of screen time lavished on them by the BBC, for example. They don't mind the 'BNP in Blazers' as long as they keep the blazers on.

As a sidebar, the UKIP website only mentions the BNP in passing, relating to the expulsion of two UKIP members who were existing BNP members. The BNP website has a length explanation of why you should stick with them instead of going UKIP, which amusingly includes the fact that UKIP are free marketers, whereas the BNP has the most sweeping series of nationalisation plans of any major party (+the BNP).

thing is for both parties that the set of racists and EU-haters is much smaller than the set of people who let those passions determine their votes

The BNP have virtually disappeared from political discourse over the last few years, although support for extreme RW parties usually drains away during periods of Tory government, or the early years of one at least.

YouGov's Anthony Wells make his prediction

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9377

As it is though, my personal best guess is Conservatives around 277 seats, Labour around 267, the Lib Dems around 29 and the SNP around 52. I’ll revisit those once we have the final polls.

xp

UKIP have v deliberately focused on immigration rather than the EU per se tho, which is where I draw the connections

SNP wont get more than 40. Tactical voting is in play up here to keep them out. (never thought id see the day tory and labour voters combining but then again after the last 2 years we saw the true colours)

The fact they might still get 40 shows the anger against the Scottish labour party and how they are seen as red tories.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/05/three-charts-show-scotland-should-stop-whining

Nice non-inflammatory headline here.

UKIP's traditional poor communications mean that their pivot away from the EU has failed to trickle down to, er, Nigel Farage.

(xp) open season on Scots basically, left, right and centre, makes you proud to be British!

In Basingstoke today. There's a UKIP 'shop' in the town centre. The local UKIP candidate also runs an antique shop around the corner and recently handed in his son to the police for stealing antiques from him. The son is also a member of Basingstoke and Dean Council.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2990572/Ukip-candidate-hands-son-police-discovering-stock-antiques-shop-stolen.html

UKIP are a remarkably spivvy group, aren't they?

I'm not really receptive to all this SNP-bashing, but I feel like "last time I got all caught up in a massive landslide it turned out my expectations were naive" is not really the best way to begin explaining why you're voting SNP this time round.

Not sure what that's in reference to, but I think that factor probably hurts the Greens far more than the SNP.

That widely-anticipated Green Party landslide, yes.

My disappointment with Labour peaked under Blair but I stuck with them because I like my local MP. I can't imagine only turning away from them now, when the leader is more left-wing than the previous two. But then I don't have the SNP as an option.

The SNP aren't that left wing either, btw this Red Tories thing is like 'Tony Bliar', annoying and stupid.

You hear that quite a lot, but the party membership has been swollen beyond all recognition by the influx of much more left-wing Scots, and while some of them might drift away, the numbers are so huge that some of them will get into positions of power in the party and a lot of them will vote at conference and I think it's quickly becoming a firmly left-wing party.

Wish someone would try the same trick with the Tories. They have so few members we could probably take them over with ILXors alone.

another prediction, by a bunch of academics under the banner "Polling Observatory"

including:

Dr Robert Ford, Senior Lecturer in Politics
http://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/rob.ford/personaldetails

http://may2015.com/ideas/separate-academic-forecast-tories-will-win-vote-by-2-3-points-but-miliband-most-likely-pm/
Polling Observatory is Robert Ford, Will Jennings, Mark Pickup and Christopher Wlezien.

Tory — 274 (251-305)
Labour — 272 (244-295)
SNP — 54 (46-58)
Lib Dem — 24 (18-29)
Ukip — 2 (1-4)
Others — 6
Northern Ireland — 18

there are another 5 sets of different predictions @
http://may2015.com/category/seat-calculator/

bbc newsnight are using:
http://www.electionforecast.co.uk/
3 academics
Chris Hanretty, University of East Anglia
Benjamin Lauderdale, London School of Economics
Nick Vivyan, Durham University

twitter: https://twitter.com/Election4castUK
they normally update at midnight, so a final prediction to come

miliband plank

while they're not that left wing i've been a bit taken aback lately to see that some ppl still use "tartan tories" as their go-to snp insult, like it's just a generic epithet detached from any etymology

The SNP are able to look more left-wing than they generally have been because of the extent to which British politics (and what is ludicrously still called the "centre ground") has drifted so far to the right.

You do get a general sense of a desperate widespread need to *believe* in a political party, that just doesn't exist in England right now, but also makes me wonder how a credible anti-austerity party would fare in England. But there's no infrastructure for that to happen right now, Scotland has been lucky to have an established, well-funded vehicle for that momentum sitting there already.

Ah right Matt, you meant Labour, sorry - I thought it was a reference to the Clegg Mania last time.

Labour doing a lot better there than almost any other prediction I've seen of late. So if a lot of auld yins shuffle down to the polling booth to burst SNP's bubble (or partially deflated it), as they did in the referendum, Labour should be the largest party?

I can't take SNP seriously as a left-wing alternative until they give that creep Brian Soutar his million quid back.

also makes me wonder how a credible anti-austerity party would fare in England

or a left-wing Brexit party

Every poll has been saying SNP = 50. In the last day or two people have been saying there is no way they will get this much. Does seem to be just a feeling..

Ladbrokes now calling it for Cameron

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/06/boris-johnson-guardian-readers-vote-tory-general-election-conservatives

Johnson, who is standing for election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, has been deployed daily to at least 20 tight seats

*snicker*

re: or a left-wing Brexit party

an attempt was made a few years ago by Professor Alan Sked, to form a new party, called New Deal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal_(British_political_party)

but the leader had an illness and the project was placed on hold.

the cabinet manual that cameron signed off seems pretty sensible, the griping of clegg/right-wing press seems like hot air, there is surely no mechanic or authority they cld appeal to

ed balls
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CEWgltVWMAAXsIc.jpg

According to The Times our Queen is gonna sort it.

Final polls. Tories look fucked but its about seats:

SV: CON 33 LAB 33
YG: CON 34 LAB 34
CR: CON 35 LAB 34
ICM: CON 35 LAB 35
PB: LAB 33 CON 31

more on...

Final Polls
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9403

If this plays out as widely expected we are about to experience the most monumental collective hissy fit in recent memory.

Doesn't anyone think the UK should follow France and others in banning opinion polling after an election date has been announced?

I thought about this today, but there's some good comes of it, isn't there? You can see it spurring "oh shit this is really tight I need to vote"-type thinking, as well as giving a good steer for tactical voters.

But on the other hand it would have been a hilarious surprise if the SNP had swept all the Scottish seats when nobody had really been expecting it.

Definitely! But of course the polls themselves are driving it to a large extent.

Election results would be very different without polling in the month leading up to them. I'm 100% for banning them.

i was expecting something more along the Kinnock/ lightbulb lines for Ed in The S*n this morning. i guess yesterday's bacon sandwich thing was the best they could muster. arseholes.

They're saving the worst until after the election.

yeah, the big push will be for destabilizing any non-Tory government that attempts to form next week

having said that, i feel a Tory government coming on

Opinion polls are a useful counterweight to a tabloid press telling us what the voters think. Banning them would lead to a different kind of confirmation bias I feel.

France also has two rounds of voting, which makes it a significantly different case.

I think that's probably right.

I grudgingly voted for Labour at 7am but have a similar feeling to NV. I think low turnout + reliability of the crotchety pensioner vote + over-prediction of LD collapse + awfulness of Scottish Labour + fear of instability will give the Tories an approx 40 seat lead over Labour and just get an unstable coalition over the line. My other half (who is much closer to the insider talk) thinks the Tories will have a single-digit lead over Labour and Miliband will be PM.