2015 UK General Election campaign & aftermath discussion thread.

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.

The "coup" talk that has sprung up is ridiculous. If the numbers are there hissy fit or not there is nothing anyone can do.

it's completely ludicrous and undemocratic. if your party is a toxic bunch of pricks that nobody wants to work with, and you can't get a majority, here's a tip, maybe dilute some of your poison.

They've tried that, they're just fundamentally incapable of doing so.

(don't need to tell anyone here this but) I like these increased prominence of smaller parties but it's pretty frustrating that all those votes go in the bin under FPTP and it feels like there's no way we will ever get a better system.

Wonder if even the Lib Dems support electoral reform now or if they've worked out that a sizeable chunk of their votes this time round are from people who'd rather vote for a smaller party who hasn't betrayed them but voted for a status quo party as the only chance to keep ___ out locally, while knowing that their vote would happily prop up whoever ___ is if it comes to it anyway

will whoever wins not try and change the system now? i read a few articles saying that's why this election is so pivotal, that the winner will either try and open things up or in the tories' case, reduce the number of mps to gerrymander their way towards more power.

UKIP getting 15% of the vote and ending up with one seat might give the right-wing press the impetus to back reform.

xps: But also argue with what that piece contends, that there are any moves to provoke a quite comfy "very British" coup -- more Agatha Christie than Allende or something. Yes the right-wing press will try and distabilize but from what I can tell if an anti-Tory coalition gets quite a few seats over the line then its all huffing and puffing. If its like a seat over then its unstable anyway.

The "coup" is also reliant on Cameron really staying at all costs but if the Tories poll below 280 seats...he is shameless, but he has also looked tired.

A lot of the press barons have been really rattled by this election. I've actually been partially pleased by the headlines as the viciousness looks desperate.

If this is all bad, and the morning (and few weeks after) will be even worse then get ready to do this more often. There could be an election in July. Even then I don't think whatever government emerges would survive the full-term anyway. I'd say get ready to do more often.

Maybe the Queen will sort it out.

xps I'm just a bit gloomy about the chances of any real progress happening when whichever party leads the govt has been favoured by the two-party cycle of FPTP for so long.

If it's a Labour-led govt I suppose there's some small chance of progress; not so keen on the Tory gerrymandering option, obv, especially as my local seat already had the student wards shaved off it and replaced by more right-leaning villages last time round.

xxp "UKIP getting 15% of the vote and ending up with one seat might give the right-wing press the impetus to back reform." true I guess. maybe I shouldn't be so keen on reform after all!

I'm all for PR, though my one fear is a system that would allow endless hilarious facebook campaigns to make zippy off rainbow PM etc

ha oh god i have seen the future and i wish to go back to bed, forever

the winner will either try and open things up or in the tories' case, reduce the number of mps to gerrymander their way towards more power

Extremely unlikely they'd be able to do this without a majority, the LibDems have already shot down one gerrymandering attempt in the last five years.

http://www.theargus.co.uk/resources/images/3734588.jpg

Daily Express beating the drum for patriotism, but not that sort of patriotism. Also free mugs.

"the worlds greatest newspaper"

how is that even allowed ?

plus that tatty rom-com book that was popular 5 years ago for a quid. Real England.