2015 UK General Election campaign & aftermath discussion thread.

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.

Very nearly gave the 'Cannabis is Less Harmful Than Alcohol' candidate my vote, but had to go SNP in end.

Will there be low turnout? I'm thinking it might well be higher than the last couple.

It has been 59% - 65% for the last three elections and i'm not really getting a sense that it's likely to be much more than that. It's been an uninspiring, low-key campaign without vast amounts of policy differentiation. I think there will be a proportion of disaffected returning / first-time voters but a lot of them will be gravitating towards UKIP and won't have a huge impact on the results. I'd like to imagine that the toxicity of the Conservatives will motivate a strong Labour turnout but i'm less confident of that now than i would have been a couple of years ago.

idk, it's all guesswork, but i have a fiver on it being in the low sixties.

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

this is honestly going to be hell. "coalition of the losers" etc etc. it's going to be the most unseemly few weeks. is it too much to ask just to have some decent local system to vote in, based on issues you care about in your area, and abandon this farcical personality contest?

Good luck UK.

Decided I didn't want to vote for a party that included the SWP so I voted Green. If Stella Creasy loses by 1 vote I may regret that but n/m.

Graun piece nicely bleak about the "coup" http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/06/tories-coup-legitimacy-democratic-ed-miliband-government-labour

TUSC ended their pamphlet with a hearty 'FREE PALESTINE', thus cementing my Green vote

I am hoping/suspecting it will be too close to really pull that one off though. Single digit lead, say. Xp

In America, higher turnouts favour the left so I wonder if the same applies here?

Guardian were reporting a potential higher turnout than normal based on their polling, where 73 per cent of respondents said they were 10/10 likely to vote. Also, looking at Scotland's high turnout might have inspired people? /idealism

I'm mostly basing my (complete finger-in-the-wind) prediction on the fact that the smaller parties are considerably more prominent than they used to be, no idea if that will actually play out though.