Really this election seems to be one of those where people have been fooled by the closeness of the polls into thinking the outcome will actually be really close. As we know, tie on votes is a Labour win, barring any bizarre unforeseen shifts around the place, but the narrative of tieing in the polls with an expectation of shy tory syndrome has led to it being considered a tighter race than in fact it is. Ed faces an awkward aftermath, but that's not the same as it being too close to call.
I wonder if the attempted character assassination of Ed Miliband has backfired; generated sympathy with the public and, some ways, might have benefited Labour.
I do wonder whether the Tories and the press ended up setting such low expectations for Ed Miliband that a large proportion of the electorate ended up being pleasantly surprised simply because he managed to come across as a functioning human being.
In homage to Avery, here's a yellow box with the latest forecasts from various academics/pundits, and a slection of PB regulars. Apologies for any mistakes (in a couple of cases I've had to guess the PC/Respect figures):
In homage to Avery, here's a yellow box with the latest forecasts from various academics/pundits, and a slection of PB regulars. Apologies for any mistakes (in a couple of cases I've had to guess the PC/Respect figures):
Just me, antifrank, and NPXMP on our own predicting a Labour plurality.
rcs100's prediction of CON 311, Lab 248 is especially piquant.
I'm predicting a Lab plurality too, though I haven't had the guts to tie myself to particular numbers, so maybe that doesn't count.
I did on both of the prediction games (under my real name). Also here a couple of days ago went for a dead heat 276-276 (I think), but with one seat having to go back to the polls because of some sort of foul-up.
I'm sure partisans will see it as rationalising (and people were saying this in 2010 as well), but this is surely an election to lose.
Given the ludicrous over-promising by all parties, squaring the circle in the light of the true state of the economy is going to be incredibly difficult.
Really this election seems to be one of those where people have been fooled by the closeness of the polls into thinking the outcome will actually be really close. As we know, tie on votes is a Labour win, barring any bizarre unforeseen shifts around the place, but the narrative of tieing in the polls with an expectation of shy tory syndrome has led to it being considered a tighter race than in fact it is. Ed faces an awkward aftermath, but that's not the same as it being too close to call.
Not necessarily. Tie on votes but with Slab wipeout and you have to find out where the additional Lab votes are......then you can be sure
Martin Boon @martinboon 2m2 minutes ago Turnout does look like it might return to 1990's levels. Upping my prediction to 72-74%. @ElectoralCommUK 10/10 in @guardian_clark poll 74%
Might mean the majority of kippers are neither Bluekip nor Redkip but are in fact John Majors missing voters
The Conservatives are going to be about as happy as a penguin in a microwave looking at the latest polls, either the polls or the betting markets are wrong, we will see later.
Labour judging by here in Amber Valley yesterday put a huge effort in, where they found all the numbers on a working day I can only guess. Looking at the polls it may have paid off, in the end Cameron and co have hugely brassed off Public Sector workers, capitalised on fully by the Unions. That is where it may end up won and lost. Public Sector workers are motivated en masse to go out and vote Labour.
Not sure most will gain as much as they think they will the nation still spends far too much.
I can't see why the tories ground game has been so poor, tbh. Noone but themselves to blame if they've been this complacent.
In homage to Avery, here's a yellow box with the latest forecasts from various academics/pundits, and a slection of PB regulars. Apologies for any mistakes (in a couple of cases I've had to guess the PC/Respect figures):
Nothing has changed in the last 36 hours or even two four weeks.
The only small difference that has been was recorded in the beginning of the campaign when the Great British public found out that Ed Miliband did not eat babies after all. There was a one-off jump and it has remained like that.
I think you may be misreading this.
I think people that were flirting with the Greens and such like have suddenly realised that the Tories were winning and are swinging behind Ed and trying to shore up Labour.
Do we have Red LD's swinging back as well? Genuine question.
I believe there is an element of LD that were going to vote Green now switching to Lab.
I'm sure partisans will see it as rationalising (and people were saying this in 2010 as well), but this is surely an election to lose.
Given the ludicrous over-promising by all parties, squaring the circle in the light of the true state of the economy is going to be incredibly difficult.
There are better elections to win, but never a good one to lose.
Martin Boon @martinboon 2m2 minutes ago Turnout does look like it might return to 1990's levels. Upping my prediction to 72-74%. @ElectoralCommUK 10/10 in @guardian_clark poll 74%
Good - people might finally stop talking about the inevitable decline of our turnout, even though it went up the last 2 times (even if it was still too low and from the lowest point)
Populus is 33/33 or Lab by one 34/33 depending whether you take the numbers including the squeeze question as the DK in this poll are breaking Tory. Also has Tory ahead on party most identified with and who you would vote for if you had to. Straws for my blue friends :-)
Oh, thank you, thank you, bless you, good sir! ;-)
What i don't understand is how a consistent and clear trend to the Tories in the phone polls since Jan/Feb would level out and all return to Labour in the last 36 hours.
Makes no sense to me at all.
It makes perfect sense. Many of the pollsters filters are based around "likelyhood to vote" or whether "dont knows" will actually vote at all. If what has been happening over the past 48 hours is that a significant number of voters have made up their mind to definitely vote especially if they did not vote last time, that would easily account for the polling changes we have seen. My only caveat would be that yougov did not pick this up and they have designed their current polling regime exactly to pick up this sort of late movement, however their figures are very much in line with all the others.
On a subjective note my feeling from knocking on a large number of doors over the past 6 months was that there were more genuine "undecideds2 (ie not those who just dont want to tell you there not going to vote for you) than I have come across previously. I even had a chap last night who said he was going to sit down after dinner to read both the labour & tory manifestos to come to a final decision.
We need to wait another 15 or so hours to find out if all this is right
Some advice: if you live in a densely-populated area or in an area with a lot of students, don't wait until the final hour to go to vote. We all know what happened in Clegg's constituency last time. They couldn't cope with the last minute rush. The same thing happened in parts of central London and Birmingham. And in Liverpool Wavertree they ran out of ballot papers, despite the turnout being just 61%.
What i don't understand is how a consistent and clear trend to the Tories in the phone polls since Jan/Feb would level out and all return to Labour in the last 36 hours.
Makes no sense to me at all.
Nothing has changed in the last 36 hours or even two four weeks.
The only small difference that has been was recorded in the beginning of the campaign when the Great British public found out that Ed Miliband did not eat babies after all. There was a one-off jump and it has remained like that.
Arguably the key failing in the Blue campaign was the inability to decide whether the line was "Ed eats babies" or "Ed is too incompetent to eat babies and looks stupid when he tries".
Exactly. And when Ed did better than expected or not as bad as expected people stopped listening to the rest of the Tory message. All the stuff about high employment, low inflation, what this means for you and why this is good was missing. Plus the Tories have - assuming for the moment that they win - made life impossible for themselves with all these promises of no tax increases etc.
They should have - right from the moment they were elected - been explaining day in day out how badly Labour left the economy, not just in terms of deficit which is too abstract but in terms of every day stuff e.g. this PFI contract means that his hospital has to pay £859 to change a lightbulb for the next thousand years or whatever. They needed to do this so that they could explain and get people to understand why savings needed to be made, where and why Labour could not be trusted and they could. But they didn't do that and have rather lazily assumed that the relative good economic news spoke for itself. Whereas - either people don't notice - or, if they do, they think that it's safe to vote Labour again.
And - their biggest failing to my mind - too many of them have not thought of their policies in terms of how they affect ordinary people. It's fine to worry about business and rich people like, say, Dyson creating jobs etc but they needed to be much more focused on, say, the 6-man business struggling to survive (there was a lovely quote by a stonemason in EdM's Doncaster constituency in the Evening Standard last night saying that they were nearly bankrupt at the end of the last Labour government) and the ordinary family. Funnily enough I think Osborne probably gets this more than Cameron but they don't have enough people in their party who have lived ordinary lives and experienced what it is like to be unemployed, made redundant, worry about redundancy, worry about savings and pensions and where to live etc. I don't think Labour have such people either. None of them do, really.
Which is why we have a choice between the Crap, the Credulous and the Complacent.
In homage to Avery, here's a yellow box with the latest forecasts from various academics/pundits, and a slection of PB regulars. Apologies for any mistakes (in a couple of cases I've had to guess the PC/Respect figures):
In homage to Avery, here's a yellow box with the latest forecasts from various academics/pundits, and a slection of PB regulars. Apologies for any mistakes (in a couple of cases I've had to guess the PC/Respect figures):
Martin Boon @martinboon 2m2 minutes ago Turnout does look like it might return to 1990's levels. Upping my prediction to 72-74%. @ElectoralCommUK 10/10 in @guardian_clark poll 74%
Good - people might finally stop talking about the inevitable decline of our turnout, even though it went up the last 2 times (even if it was still too low and from the lowest point)
Worth also noting if ICM et al are correct then the share to the two major parties will be up about 5% ...
Well, just voted - Labour in the GE, LD in the local.
I don't know about anyone else, but I always get a bit emotional when I go and cast my ballot. It's all held together by good people from all parties doing their bit and we all take it so much for granted. It's what you do. But when you think about how many can't vote around the world and how people in this country struggled to get the vote and then fought to preserve the right to vote and so on, it's actually a huge thing that we do and that we are able to do. And it's all so understated and polite in there, and quiet; and yet we are making a massive choice that will shape lives and markets and history. What a truly wonderful country we live in that we are able to do it.
Blimey - and I have not had a drink since Sunday :-)
Just noticed this paragraph from an article in the Telegraph.
Referring to Nick Clegg
"Labour strategists now accept that Mr Clegg’s political career looks likely to be saved from a combination of an estimated £200,000 spent on campaigning in the seat in recent weeks, and Tory supporters voting tactically to help Mr Clegg."
How does that comment about £200,000 spent in the seat tally with the supposed limits on how much can be spent by an individual candidate?
Martin Boon @martinboon 2m2 minutes ago Turnout does look like it might return to 1990's levels. Upping my prediction to 72-74%. @ElectoralCommUK 10/10 in @guardian_clark poll 74%
I've been backing that 70-75% band on Betfair. Also just got on Labour most seats at 5.0.
Just noticed this paragraph from an article in the Telegraph.
Referring to Nick Clegg
"Labour strategists now accept that Mr Clegg’s political career looks likely to be saved from a combination of an estimated £200,000 spent on campaigning in the seat in recent weeks, and Tory supporters voting tactically to help Mr Clegg."
How does that comment about £200,000 spent in the seat tally with the supposed limits on how much can be spent by an individual candidate?
Ways and means to spend money. Nothing to stop "private individuals" spending what they like, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
With 54% of Scots feeling the UK MSM and UK Politicians have become more hostile, the bizarre thing is that they may well have just killed off the Union. The constant demonising of the SNP by the Tories and the MSM has effectively done the SNPs work for them. History may yet judge David Cameron as the man who first saved and then destroyed the UK by putting party before country.
I think irrespective of todays results in Scotland, the SNP surge is about to get super charged. Holyrood 2016 is likely to result in the 3 "mainstream parties" being squeezed in a pincer movement by the SNP, Greens and rather bizarrely UKIP.
I'm getting the feeling that the neck and neck polling may not be right and that one party may actually do much much better than the other. I just can't tell which! Blimey.
With 54% of Scots feeling the UK MSM and UK Politicians have become more hostile, the bizarre thing is that they may well have just killed off the Union. The constant demonising of the SNP by the Tories and the MSM has effectively done the SNPs work for them. History may yet judge David Cameron as the man who first saved and then destroyed the UK by putting party before country.
I think irrespective of todays results in Scotland, the SNP surge is about to get super charged. Holyrood 2016 is likely to result in the 3 "mainstream parties" being squeezed in a pincer movement by the SNP, Greens and rather bizarrely UKIP.
I'd be surprised if a poll of the English showed different results to that picture.
I also think Labour will stage a resurgence in Scotland over the next 9 months to draw neck-and-neck with the Nats by early next year.
What i don't understand is how a consistent and clear trend to the Tories in the phone polls since Jan/Feb would level out and all return to Labour in the last 36 hours.
Makes no sense to me at all.
Nothing has changed in the last 36 hours or even two four weeks.
The only small difference that has been was.
Arguably the key failing in the Blue campaign was the inability to decide whether the line was "Ed eats babies" or "Ed is too incompetent to eat babies and looks stupid when he tries".
Exactly. And when Ed did better than expected or not as bad as expected people stopped listening to the rest of the Tory message. All the stuff about high employment, low inflation, what this means for you and why this is good was missing. Plus the Tories have - assuming for the moment that they win - made life impossible for themselves with all these promises of no tax increases etc.
They should have - right from the moment they were elected - been explaining day in day out how badly Labour left the economy, not just in terms of deficit which is too abstract but in terms of every day stuff e.g. this PFI contract means that his hospital has to pay £859 to change a lightbulb for the next thousand years or whatever. They needed to do this so that they could explain and get people to understand why savings needed to be made, where and why Labour could not be trusted and they could. But they didn't do that and have rather lazily assumed that the relative good economic news spoke for itself. Whereas - either people don't notice - or, if they do, they think that it's safe to vote Labour again.
And - their biggest failing to my mind - too many of them have not thought of their policies in terms of how they affect ordinary people. It's fine to worry about business and rich people like, say, Dyson creating jobs etc but they needed to be much more focused on, say, the 6-man business struggling to survive (there was a lovely quote by a stonemason in EdM's Doncaster constituency in the Evening Standard last night saying that they were nearly bankrupt at the end of the last Labour government) and the ordinary family. Funnily enough I think Osborne probably gets this more than Cameron but they don't have enough people in their party who have lived ordinary lives and experienced what it is like to be unemployed, made redundant, worry about redundancy, worry about savings and pensions and where to live etc. I don't think Labour have such people either. None of them do, really.
Which is why we have a choice between the Crap, the Credulous and the Complacent.
Spot on, Cyclefree. Can you please consider running for the leadership of that bunch of muppets in the Tory party?
As PB's self-appointed fashion correspondent, here are my views on the outfits of the wives and female party leaders at the ballot station. SamCam - a bit nursey in that outfit but some men are turned on by that. Approve. Justine Miliband - Hmm. I feel she should have made more of an effort and it's not really co-ordinated. Miriam Clegg - stylish as always. Natalie Bennett. WTF? I thought the Greens believed in global warming so why is she wearing boots as if it's the middle of winter. Thumbs down. Leanne Wood - stylish but her hair would look better in a bob. Nicola Sturgeon. Very stylish. Perhaps a bit cocktail party-ish. She's probably got the champagne on ice for later
BTW when I voted this morning, on the ballot paper the Conservative candidate didn't give his address but just said "in the constituency". Is that usual?
I'm getting the feeling that the neck and neck polling may not be right and that one party may actually do much much better than the other. I just can't tell which! Blimey.
Labour?? Wouldn't surprise me. Would depress me - given how malevolent they are on civil liberties and free speech and other stuff I care about - but wouldn't surprise me.
As PB's self-appointed fashion correspondent, here are my views on the outfits of the wives and female party leaders at the ballot station. SamCam - a bit nursey in that outfit but some men are turned on by that. Approve. Justine Miliband - Hmm. I feel she should have made more of an effort and it's not really co-ordinated. Miriam Clegg - stylish as always. Natalie Bennett. WTF? I thought the Greens believed in global warming so why is she wearing boots as if it's the middle of winter. Thumbs down. Leanne Wood - stylish but her hair would look better in a bob. Nicola Sturgeon. Very stylish. Perhaps a bit cocktail party-ish. She's probably got the champagne on ice for later
BTW when I voted this morning, on the ballot paper the Conservative candidate didn't give his address but just said "in the constituency". Is that usual?
There's a box to tick if you don't want your address made public. For security I suppose, or to stop constituents bothering you at home.
Some advice: if you live in a densely-populated area or in an area with a lot of students, don't wait until the final hour to go to vote. We all know what happened in Clegg's constituency last time. They couldn't cope with the last minute rush. The same thing happened in parts of central London and Birmingham. And in Liverpool Wavertree they ran out of ballot papers, despite the turnout being just 61%.
So long as you're in the queue at 10 you get to vote this time round.
BTW when I voted this morning, on the ballot paper the Conservative candidate didn't give his address but just said "in the constituency". Is that usual?
We had one like that here. I thought it might be a privacy/security thing if, e.g. threats (of any sort) had been made.
So is now the appropriate time to start panicking?
I took out a new 5-yr fixed rate mortgage product last month precisely because of the substantial risks of (1) Miliband becoming PM, whether outright or not, and (2) Greece finally defaulting.
Nothing that's happened since has caused me to regret the decision.
I was going to be away for this election because I felt like that but ultimately was persuaded by Dave's campaign to vote. His policy on housing and Scotland turned me back into a raging lefty leaving my bloated bourgeoise side behind
Two Bank of England members have said today that tax rises will not close the deficit. A labour government will be overwhelmed by the markets and will be forced as per Greece to cut spending and by that time some banks and non doms will have left and created big funding gaps for NHS and Education spending.
Labour will probably just do some sort of raid on private pensions.
An annual theft of say 2.5% of the current value of all private pensions would raise £90 billion, which would close the deficit - and wholly at the expense of private sector scum. It is also quite hard for the money to escape, so they could eventually just take it all.
I wonder if the attempted character assassination of Ed Miliband has backfired; generated sympathy with the public and, some ways, might have benefited Labour.
I do wonder whether the Tories and the press ended up setting such low expectations for Ed Miliband that a large proportion of the electorate ended up being pleasantly surprised when he managed to come across as a functioning human being.
Funnily enough I think Osborne probably gets this more than Cameron
He definitely does, and I think for all of his prancing public-schoolboy image he genuinely wants to make the country's economy better for everyone, not just his rich mates. Witness his northern powerhouse stuff, which should've really given Labour a wobble up here, if only the focus hadn't been on porcine mastication.
I also think he'd be a formidable party leader and PM - much more so than BoJo - but I wonder about skeletons in the closet.
As PB's self-appointed fashion correspondent, here are my views on the outfits of the wives and female party leaders at the ballot station. SamCam - a bit nursey in that outfit but some men are turned on by that. Approve. Justine Miliband - Hmm. I feel she should have made more of an effort and it's not really co-ordinated. Miriam Clegg - stylish as always. Natalie Bennett. WTF? I thought the Greens believed in global warming so why is she wearing boots as if it's the middle of winter. Thumbs down. Leanne Wood - stylish but her hair would look better in a bob. Nicola Sturgeon. Very stylish. Perhaps a bit cocktail party-ish. She's probably got the champagne on ice for later
BTW when I voted this morning, on the ballot paper the Conservative candidate didn't give his address but just said "in the constituency". Is that usual?
There's a box to tick if you don't want your address made public. For security I suppose, or to stop constituents bothering you at home.
Given what's happened to candidates like Charlotte Leslie and Ester McVey, I can understand that.
I'm sure partisans will see it as rationalising (and people were saying this in 2010 as well), but this is surely an election to lose.
Yup. Not much of a choice on offer. But paves the way for a new Blair/Thatcher in 2020 or sooner. Who, though?
(Clue - it won't be Michael Gove)
While such a scenario good happen, I don't think it is assured. That would be holding on to too much comfort for the blues, as it could lead to them not changing in the way they ned to on the assumption that 5 years of Ed ina dificult situation would have to lead to them winning next time. By tomorrow Ed will have proven a lot of people wrong - I have my doubts he will be up to the challenges he faces, or if anyone is, but he could surprise people again.
@martinboon: Shy @ukip? 3 partial refusers / 387 total and 2010 non-voters breaking to @labour (34%) rather than ukip (10%). 'Total' refusers, can't say.
Just bumped into one of my neighbours at the local Morrisons on Sheppey. Matt is an elderly Labour activist. He told me he'd been telling at one of the local polling stations.
I enquired as to activity and he said voting had been brisk (I was told the same at the station I voted in). I enquired as to how it was going for his bloke and he just shrugged and said "ok". He then added they thought they may trail in 3rd behind the Tories and UKIP. Must admit I was surprised to hear that.
As an aside I told him I dreaded the thought of a Miliband led government. His response; "he's just an ordinary, comprehensive schooled bloke, just like us". I clearly looked shocked, as he asked why I'd pulled the face. I explained I didn't think living in a £2M house was particularly ordinary. His respone; "you're talking rubbish, son".
They clearly don't like facts in the Labour party....
The Conservatives are going to be about as happy as a penguin in a microwave looking at the latest polls, either the polls or the betting markets are wrong, we will see later.
Labour judging by here in Amber Valley yesterday put a huge effort in, where they found all the numbers on a working day I can only guess. Looking at the polls it may have paid off, in the end Cameron and co have hugely brassed off Public Sector workers, capitalised on fully by the Unions. That is where it may end up won and lost. Public Sector workers are motivated en masse to go out and vote Labour.
Not sure most will gain as much as they think they will the nation still spends far too much.
I can't see why the tories ground game has been so poor, tbh. Noone but themselves to blame if they've been this complacent.
I am sure we will find out tomorrow but I was in a key Tory Target seat yesterday and the was excellent preparation and well resourced ground game with lots of additional resources set to be deployed on Polling Day.
If the final polls are right it may be that the election campaign ended a week too late for the Tories. While the Ed Stone may have been amusing it took the attention away from the Lab in the SNP's pocket message which seemed to be gaining some traction.
Owen Jones@OwenJones84·4 mins4 minutes ago The finally polls show a shift to Labour. They may be wrong. But imagine the scenes of panic in Tory HQ right now. And savour it.
Arguably the key failing in the Blue campaign was the inability to decide whether the line was "Ed eats babies" or "Ed is too incompetent to eat babies and looks stupid when he tries".
Exactly. And when Ed did better than expected or not as bad as expected people stopped listening to the rest of the Tory message. All the stuff about high employment, low inflation, what this means for you and why this is good was missing. Plus the Tories have - assuming for the moment that they win - made life impossible for themselves with all these promises of no tax increases etc.
They should have - right from the moment they were elected - been explaining day in day out how badly Labour left the economy, not just in terms of deficit which is too abstract but in terms of every day stuff e.g. this PFI contract means that his hospital has to pay £859 to change a lightbulb for the next thousand years or whatever. They needed to do this so that they could explain and get people to understand why savings needed to be made, where and why Labour could not be trusted and they could. But they didn't do that and have rather lazily assumed that the relative good economic news spoke for itself. Whereas - either people don't notice - or, if they do, they think that it's safe to vote Labour again.
And - their biggest failing to my mind - too many of them have not thought of their policies in terms of how they affect ordinary people. It's fine to worry about business and rich people like, say, Dyson creating jobs etc but they needed to be much more focused on, say, the 6-man business struggling to survive (there was a lovely quote by a stonemason in EdM's Doncaster constituency in the Evening Standard last night saying that they were nearly bankrupt at the end of the last Labour government) and the ordinary family. Funnily enough I think Osborne probably gets this more than Cameron but they don't have enough people in their party who have lived ordinary lives and experienced what it is like to be unemployed, made redundant, worry about redundancy, worry about savings and pensions and where to live etc. I don't think Labour have such people either. None of them do, really.
Which is why we have a choice between the Crap, the Credulous and the Complacent.
Spot on, Cyclefree. Can you please consider running for the leadership of that bunch of muppets in the Tory party?
I'd vote for you.
Thank you.
Do you think Britain is ready for another bossy, opinionated, middle-aged woman to run it??!!
If the turnout is up that is probably extremely good news for UKIP and pretty good news for Labour.
In every election since 1979 Labour + LibDems have gained a steady 15.5m votes +/- a very small number. The split of those votes has varied. Likewise Tory + Did Not Vote added up to a static total. High turnouts have historically indicated a Tory win.
This time round will be fascinating to analyse. I suspect the Lab + LD thing may remain (with Labour hoovering up a big chunk of 2010 LDs). I suspect the Tory/turnout link may not - as UKIP eat into the DNV vote with newly energised voters.
In homage to Avery, here's a yellow box with the latest forecasts from various academics/pundits, and a slection of PB regulars. Apologies for any mistakes (in a couple of cases I've had to guess the PC/Respect figures):
Just me, antifrank, and NPXMP on our own predicting a Labour plurality.
rcs100's prediction of CON 311, Lab 248 is especially piquant.
Er, I predicted 300 seats for Labour this morning.
And what did you forecast in the Official PB Prediction, a couple of weeks ago?
I was unable to do it, as I was flying back from Oz, but as soon as I landed I made my own Official Prediction, so I could be laughed at or lauded, as and when.
With 54% of Scots feeling the UK MSM and UK Politicians have become more hostile, the bizarre thing is that they may well have just killed off the Union. The constant demonising of the SNP by the Tories and the MSM has effectively done the SNPs work for them. History may yet judge David Cameron as the man who first saved and then destroyed the UK by putting party before country.
I think irrespective of todays results in Scotland, the SNP surge is about to get super charged. Holyrood 2016 is likely to result in the 3 "mainstream parties" being squeezed in a pincer movement by the SNP, Greens and rather bizarrely UKIP.
I'd be surprised if a poll of the English showed different results to that picture.
I also think Labour will stage a resurgence in Scotland over the next 9 months to draw neck-and-neck with the Nats by early next year.
I think it will take SLAB years to recover from this, I'm sure the Scottish Tories kept expecting to stage a recovery back to the old normal - 20 years on they are still waiting. If anything SLAB and SLID are about to become a zombie party like SCUP with support levels below what is needed to succeed in a FPTP system.
Arguably the key failing in the Blue campaign was the inability to decide whether the line was "Ed eats babies" or "Ed is too incompetent to eat babies and looks stupid when he tries".
Exactly. And when Ed did better than expected or not as bad as expected people stopped listening to the rest of the Tory message. All the stuff about high employment, low inflation, what this means for you and why this is good was missing. Plus the Tories have - assuming for the moment that they win - made life impossiblec.
They should have - right from the moment they were elected - been explaining day in day out how badly Labour left the economy, not just in terms of deficit which is too abstract but in terms of every day stuff e.g. this PFI contract means that his hospital has to pay £859 to change a lightbulb for the next thousand years or whatever. They needed to do this so that they could explain and get people to understand why savings needed to be made, where and why Labour could not be trusted and they could. But they didn't do that and have rather lazily assumed that the relative good economic news spoke for itself. Whereas - either people don't notice - or, if they do, they think that it's safe to And - their biggest failing to my mind - too many of them have not thought of their policies in terms of how they affect ordinary people. It's fine to worry about business and rich people like, say, Dyson creating jobs etc but they needed to be much more focused on, say, the 6-man business struggling to survive (there was a lovely quote by a stonemason in EdM's Doncaster constituency in the Evening Standard last night saying that they were nearly bankrupt at the end of the last Labour government) and the ordinary family. Funnily enough I think Osborne probably gets this more than Cameron but they don't have enough people in their party who have lived ordinary lives and experienced what it is like to be unemployed, made redundant, worry about redundancy, worry about savings and pensions and where to live etc. I don't think Labour have such people either. None of them do, really.
Which is why we have a choice between the Crap, the Credulous and the Complacent.
Spot on, Cyclefree. Can you please consider running for the leadership of that bunch of muppets in the Tory party?
I'd vote for you.
Thank you.
Do you think Britain is ready for another bossy, opinionated, middle-aged woman to run it??!!
Well, Scotland is!
And, that's nonsense. I found you perfectly charming when I met you, once I'd got you off the topic of mumsnet ;-)
I voted in local elections today and I was able to vote for three different candidates on my ballot paper. What happens to that ballot when counting starts? - as it can't just be placed in one pile by the sorters ready for counting, it has three different responses on it.
If the turnout is up that is probably extremely good news for UKIP and pretty good news for Labour.
In every election since 1979 Labour + LibDems have gained a steady 15.5m votes +/- a very small number. The split of those votes has varied. Likewise Tory + Did Not Vote added up to a static total. High turnouts have historically indicated a Tory win.
This time round will be fascinating to analyse. I suspect the Lab + LD thing may remain (with Labour hoovering up a big chunk of 2010 LDs). I suspect the Tory/turnout link may not - as UKIP eat into the DNV vote with newly energised voters.
That is the kind of interesting fact that you learn every day on pb
I wonder if the attempted character assassination of Ed Miliband has backfired; generated sympathy with the public and, some ways, might have benefited Labour.
I do wonder whether the Tories and the press ended up setting such low expectations for Ed Miliband that a large proportion of the electorate ended up being pleasantly surprised when he managed to come across as a functioning human being.
It was said by many, including myself, that Ed would carefully managed, would swat up for the debates and do fine. By fine, still means being piss poor in the grand scheme of things, but with the press making him out to be somebody who was unable to function, it would be a win for him.
The problem was the press actually missed the point, which I repeatedly make, which he is a classic bright academic idiot i.e. reads all the material, identifies a problem, then proposes a solution that might be ok in the lab, but in the real world doesn't work e.g rent controls. In Miliband world, everything is black and white, good and bad, and can be solved by banning or regulating, when we know that often subtle nudging can be far more effective e.g. I bet you could raise a tonne more money by fiscal drag of tax bands than screaming 50p and have loads of rich people running to their accountants for advice (for example see France).
What I don't think many people saw coming was just how piss poor the Tories would be. There were poor in 2010 GE, but I would say this time they were even worse.
And the Lib Dems...I think they would have done just as well sitting on their hands for 6 weeks, on wait that is basically what they did do.
Two Bank of England members have said today that tax rises will not close the deficit. A labour government will be overwhelmed by the markets and will be forced as per Greece to cut spending and by that time some banks and non doms will have left and created big funding gaps for NHS and Education spending.
Labour will probably just do some sort of raid on private pensions.
An annual theft of say 2.5% of the current value of all private pensions would raise £90 billion, which would close the deficit - and wholly at the expense of private sector scum. It is also quite hard for the money to escape, so they could eventually just take it all.
I wonder if the attempted character assassination of Ed Miliband has backfired; generated sympathy with the public and, some ways, might have benefited Labour.
I do wonder whether the Tories and the press ended up setting such low expectations for Ed Miliband that a large proportion of the electorate ended up being pleasantly surprised when he managed to come across as a functioning human being.
When did he manage that?
Every time he appeared.
One thing's for sure, I'm feeling like my wallet will be better off in the immediate aftermath. Lab most seats, Tories below 300, UKIP 5 or lower. Only Tories most votes/Lab most seats that looks in potential doubt.
Owen Jones@OwenJones84·4 mins4 minutes ago The finally polls show a shift to Labour. They may be wrong. But imagine the scenes of panic in Tory HQ right now. And savour it.
If there's one thing that might cause be leave my desk right now and help GOTV, it's little prats like Owen Jones gloating.
As PB's self-appointed fashion correspondent, here are my views on the outfits of the wives and female party leaders at the ballot station. SamCam - a bit nursey in that outfit but some men are turned on by that. Approve. Justine Miliband - Hmm. I feel she should have made more of an effort and it's not really co-ordinated. Miriam Clegg - stylish as always. Natalie Bennett. WTF? I thought the Greens believed in global warming so why is she wearing boots as if it's the middle of winter. Thumbs down. Leanne Wood - stylish but her hair would look better in a bob. Nicola Sturgeon. Very stylish. Perhaps a bit cocktail party-ish. She's probably got the champagne on ice for later
BTW when I voted this morning, on the ballot paper the Conservative candidate didn't give his address but just said "in the constituency". Is that usual?
Myriam's the stylish one. SamCam can look gorgeous but is sometimes a bit bland and I don't like the belts she has. Her outfit today was dull.
Whatever other qualities Justine M has, a sense of fashion and elegance is not one of them. Her outfit (if one can call it that) today looks like something chosen out of Oxfam - in 5 minutes - in the dark.
Hard at this moment to think of any very elegant well-dressed public figures, certainly in public life. Theresa May, maybe.
I'm still with the betting fraternity but painfully aware that OGH warned a few days ago that the punters (not pollsters), while united in their opinion (IYKWIM), can be very VERY wrong. He also pointed out that pollsters have a far better record overall, however difficult one (I mean I) might find that to believe this morning.
And yet, and yet... An Ed win on VI seems so counterintuitive given the huge weight of contrary (anti-Ed) opinion on the very important qualitative questions **in the same polls**. Surely voters do not, en masse, vote against their own known/express preferences? Do they? Are we all mad, my masters?
Well, I dunno. To coin a phrase, all bets are off.
(Um, can one be excommunicated for saying such a thing on here?)
So is now the appropriate time to start panicking?
I took out a new 5-yr fixed rate mortgage product last month precisely because of the substantial risks of (1) Miliband becoming PM, whether outright or not, and (2) Greece finally defaulting.
Nothing that's happened since has caused me to regret the decision.
So is now the appropriate time to start panicking?
I took out a new 5-yr fixed rate mortgage product last month precisely because of the substantial risks of (1) Miliband becoming PM, whether outright or not, and (2) Greece finally defaulting.
Nothing that's happened since has caused me to regret the decision.
Hmm. We're due to choose a new product this summer after a couple of goes round with super-low-rate short-term fixeds. Longer term fixed-rate does indeed look sensible.
If the final polls are right it may be that the election campaign ended a week too late for the Tories. While the Ed Stone may have been amusing it took the attention away from the Lab in the SNP's pocket message which seemed to be gaining some traction.
Not sure - I think Dave in shirtsleeves doing passion was quite effective. Another week of that would have been better.
If the turnout is up that is probably extremely good news for UKIP and pretty good news for Labour.
In every election since 1979 Labour + LibDems have gained a steady 15.5m votes +/- a very small number. The split of those votes has varied. Likewise Tory + Did Not Vote added up to a static total. High turnouts have historically indicated a Tory win.
This time round will be fascinating to analyse. I suspect the Lab + LD thing may remain (with Labour hoovering up a big chunk of 2010 LDs). I suspect the Tory/turnout link may not - as UKIP eat into the DNV vote with newly energised voters.
The implication that most new non-voters since 1979 are former Tories is absurd and is contradicted by both common sense and the type of seats which have the lowest turnouts (ie. usually safe Labour urban/inner city seats).
It is possible to find statistical patterns to fit all kinds of rubbish theories.
Worth saying also that 1983 (biggest Tory victory since the war) had a very low turnout by the standard of the times - lower than 79, 87 and 92.
With 54% of Scots feeling the UK MSM and UK Politicians have become more hostile, the bizarre thing is that they may well have just killed off the Union. The constant demonising of the SNP by the Tories and the MSM has effectively done the SNPs work for them. History may yet judge David Cameron as the man who first saved and then destroyed the UK by putting party before country.
I think irrespective of todays results in Scotland, the SNP surge is about to get super charged. Holyrood 2016 is likely to result in the 3 "mainstream parties" being squeezed in a pincer movement by the SNP, Greens and rather bizarrely UKIP.
I'd be surprised if a poll of the English showed different results to that picture.
I also think Labour will stage a resurgence in Scotland over the next 9 months to draw neck-and-neck with the Nats by early next year.
I'd be interested to know a little about why you forecast that resurgence. Of course, the voting system in itself is so different that Labour will inevitably show a 'resurgence' which is real if only in terms of seats in Holyrood compared to Westminster. Remember that the Holyrood system uses the list vote to compensate losers in the FPTP constituency element.
Nothing has changed in the last 36 hours or even two four weeks.
The only small difference that has been was recorded in the beginning of the campaign when the Great British public found out that Ed Miliband did not eat babies after all. There was a one-off jump and it has remained like that.
I think you may be misreading this.
I think people that were flirting with the Greens and such like have suddenly realised that the Tories were winning and are swinging behind Ed and trying to shore up Labour.
What you are both misreading is labour's 'Tories eat babies' campaign as per their last PPB with Coogan. In contrast the tories have not said that of Miliband or Labour. The papers may have derided Miliband and pointed out that Labour are happy with segregated audiences. The reality is the Tories have done nothing in office to justify these Labour attacks; but if the electorate chose to believe Labour then thats the boat we are stuck in. As for the Green vote - looking at the breakdowns earlier in Ashcrofts poll - then for England and Wales the Labour vote was mostly dire and the Greens remarkably good. Didn't ICM do Ashctofts polls?
Thank you for the comments about no address for the Conservative candidate. I suspected it might be for security reasons. There has been a bit of controversy about the local Havant Conservative candidate Alan Mak, who has taken over from David Willetts. Mak is the son of Chinese immigrants who grew up in Yorkshire. There have been complaints that he is not local; not on ethnic ground but the fact he's from Yorkshire.
Comments
Make of that what you will.
Given the ludicrous over-promising by all parties, squaring the circle in the light of the true state of the economy is going to be incredibly difficult.
No gibbering or lip wobbling will be allowed.
Nothing more than a hunch.
(yes, a little moist I must admit, JackW - Help!)
They should have - right from the moment they were elected - been explaining day in day out how badly Labour left the economy, not just in terms of deficit which is too abstract but in terms of every day stuff e.g. this PFI contract means that his hospital has to pay £859 to change a lightbulb for the next thousand years or whatever. They needed to do this so that they could explain and get people to understand why savings needed to be made, where and why Labour could not be trusted and they could. But they didn't do that and have rather lazily assumed that the relative good economic news spoke for itself. Whereas - either people don't notice - or, if they do, they think that it's safe to vote Labour again.
And - their biggest failing to my mind - too many of them have not thought of their policies in terms of how they affect ordinary people. It's fine to worry about business and rich people like, say, Dyson creating jobs etc but they needed to be much more focused on, say, the 6-man business struggling to survive (there was a lovely quote by a stonemason in EdM's Doncaster constituency in the Evening Standard last night saying that they were nearly bankrupt at the end of the last Labour government) and the ordinary family. Funnily enough I think Osborne probably gets this more than Cameron but they don't have enough people in their party who have lived ordinary lives and experienced what it is like to be unemployed, made redundant, worry about redundancy, worry about savings and pensions and where to live etc. I don't think Labour have such people either. None of them do, really.
Which is why we have a choice between the Crap, the Credulous and the Complacent.
(Clue - it won't be Michael Gove)
I don't know about anyone else, but I always get a bit emotional when I go and cast my ballot. It's all held together by good people from all parties doing their bit and we all take it so much for granted. It's what you do. But when you think about how many can't vote around the world and how people in this country struggled to get the vote and then fought to preserve the right to vote and so on, it's actually a huge thing that we do and that we are able to do. And it's all so understated and polite in there, and quiet; and yet we are making a massive choice that will shape lives and markets and history. What a truly wonderful country we live in that we are able to do it.
Blimey - and I have not had a drink since Sunday :-)
Referring to Nick Clegg
"Labour strategists now accept that Mr Clegg’s political career looks likely to be saved from a combination of an estimated £200,000 spent on campaigning in the seat in recent weeks, and Tory supporters voting tactically to help Mr Clegg."
How does that comment about £200,000 spent in the seat tally with the supposed limits on how much can be spent by an individual candidate?
http://wingsoverscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/uktone.jpg
I think irrespective of todays results in Scotland, the SNP surge is about to get super charged. Holyrood 2016 is likely to result in the 3 "mainstream parties" being squeezed in a pincer movement by the SNP, Greens and rather bizarrely UKIP.
Hmm.
I also think Labour will stage a resurgence in Scotland over the next 9 months to draw neck-and-neck with the Nats by early next year.
I'd vote for you.
SamCam - a bit nursey in that outfit but some men are turned on by that. Approve.
Justine Miliband - Hmm. I feel she should have made more of an effort and it's not really co-ordinated.
Miriam Clegg - stylish as always.
Natalie Bennett. WTF? I thought the Greens believed in global warming so why is she wearing boots as if it's the middle of winter. Thumbs down.
Leanne Wood - stylish but her hair would look better in a bob.
Nicola Sturgeon. Very stylish. Perhaps a bit cocktail party-ish. She's probably got the champagne on ice for later
BTW when I voted this morning, on the ballot paper the Conservative candidate didn't give his address but just said "in the constituency". Is that usual?
Con 12 ahead with private sector workers, 11 ahead with homeowners.
How do you lose on those numbers?
I've got mega-YG, Ipsos MORI, Ashcroft
Did ICM update their fieldwork?
Labour?? Wouldn't surprise me. Would depress me - given how malevolent they are on civil liberties and free speech and other stuff I care about - but wouldn't surprise me.
I'm on labour most seats...and have been for a while.
Nothing that's happened since has caused me to regret the decision.
The crap the credulous and the complacent
I like it!
I was going to be away for this election because I felt like that but ultimately was persuaded by Dave's campaign to vote. His policy on housing and Scotland turned me back into a raging lefty leaving my bloated bourgeoise side behind
Aggregate private pension wealth was about £3.6 trillion in 2010-2012 (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/was/wealth-in-great-britain-wave-3/2010-2012/report--chapter-6--private-pension-wealth.html).
An annual theft of say 2.5% of the current value of all private pensions would raise £90 billion, which would close the deficit - and wholly at the expense of private sector scum. It is also quite hard for the money to escape, so they could eventually just take it all. When did he manage that?
I also think he'd be a formidable party leader and PM - much more so than BoJo - but I wonder about skeletons in the closet.
(N.B. I'm not a Tory).
There aren't that many people working for the public sector and living on state funding are there?
I enquired as to activity and he said voting had been brisk (I was told the same at the station I voted in). I enquired as to how it was going for his bloke and he just shrugged and said "ok". He then added they thought they may trail in 3rd behind the Tories and UKIP. Must admit I was surprised to hear that.
As an aside I told him I dreaded the thought of a Miliband led government. His response; "he's just an ordinary, comprehensive schooled bloke, just like us". I clearly looked shocked, as he asked why I'd pulled the face. I explained I didn't think living in a £2M house was particularly ordinary. His respone; "you're talking rubbish, son".
They clearly don't like facts in the Labour party....
Owen Jones@OwenJones84·4 mins4 minutes ago
The finally polls show a shift to Labour. They may be wrong. But imagine the scenes of panic in Tory HQ right now. And savour it.
Do you think Britain is ready for another bossy, opinionated, middle-aged woman to run it??!!
This time round will be fascinating to analyse. I suspect the Lab + LD thing may remain (with Labour hoovering up a big chunk of 2010 LDs). I suspect the Tory/turnout link may not - as UKIP eat into the DNV vote with newly energised voters.
3 names on the list - Bercow, kipper, green.
JB could easily poll >50% I'd suggest.
And, that's nonsense. I found you perfectly charming when I met you, once I'd got you off the topic of mumsnet ;-)
I voted in local elections today and I was able to vote for three different candidates on my ballot paper. What happens to that ballot when counting starts? - as it can't just be placed in one pile by the sorters ready for counting, it has three different responses on it.
The problem was the press actually missed the point, which I repeatedly make, which he is a classic bright academic idiot i.e. reads all the material, identifies a problem, then proposes a solution that might be ok in the lab, but in the real world doesn't work e.g rent controls. In Miliband world, everything is black and white, good and bad, and can be solved by banning or regulating, when we know that often subtle nudging can be far more effective e.g. I bet you could raise a tonne more money by fiscal drag of tax bands than screaming 50p and have loads of rich people running to their accountants for advice (for example see France).
What I don't think many people saw coming was just how piss poor the Tories would be. There were poor in 2010 GE, but I would say this time they were even worse.
And the Lib Dems...I think they would have done just as well sitting on their hands for 6 weeks, on wait that is basically what they did do.
One thing's for sure, I'm feeling like my wallet will be better off in the immediate aftermath. Lab most seats, Tories below 300, UKIP 5 or lower. Only Tories most votes/Lab most seats that looks in potential doubt.
Whatever other qualities Justine M has, a sense of fashion and elegance is not one of them. Her outfit (if one can call it that) today looks like something chosen out of Oxfam - in 5 minutes - in the dark.
Hard at this moment to think of any very elegant well-dressed public figures, certainly in public life. Theresa May, maybe.
Helen Mirren knows how to do it.
And yet, and yet... An Ed win on VI seems so counterintuitive given the huge weight of contrary (anti-Ed) opinion on the very important qualitative questions **in the same polls**. Surely voters do not, en masse, vote against their own known/express preferences? Do they? Are we all mad, my masters?
Well, I dunno. To coin a phrase, all bets are off.
(Um, can one be excommunicated for saying such a thing on here?)
It is possible to find statistical patterns to fit all kinds of rubbish theories.
Worth saying also that 1983 (biggest Tory victory since the war) had a very low turnout by the standard of the times - lower than 79, 87 and 92.
In contrast the tories have not said that of Miliband or Labour. The papers may have derided Miliband and pointed out that Labour are happy with segregated audiences. The reality is the Tories have done nothing in office to justify these Labour attacks; but if the electorate chose to believe Labour then thats the boat we are stuck in.
As for the Green vote - looking at the breakdowns earlier in Ashcrofts poll - then for England and Wales the Labour vote was mostly dire and the Greens remarkably good. Didn't ICM do Ashctofts polls?
Including everyone, Lab = 0.3% lead (+0.2% on last "week", ending 30th April)
YouGovs only = Lab 0.2% lead (-0.6% on last "week", ending 30th April)
Non-YouGovs = Lab 0.3% lead (was Con lead 0.7%)
So it would seem that in YG a small swing to Tories, and a 1% swing to Labour in the non-YGs
Now, Phone v. Online:
Online polls: Lab lead 0.4% (-0.2%)
Phone polls: CON lead of 0.8% (-1.9%)
Small drop in Lab lead in the Onlines, but the Phones show a big drop in Tory lead. And, yet! Yet, the Blues are still in front with the Phones!
Alastair Campbell@campbellclaret·4 mins4 minutes ago
. @rustyrockets saves the best for last. A polling day portrait of @David_Cameron Today's Trews https://youtu.be/MmiMZZZdjqc ” <LOL as Dave says