The bookmakers are still all too generous with their LibDem over/unders.
Let's put this in context for a moment. If things go really, really well for the LibDems, they might get 18%. Sod it, say 20%. (That's 60 or 70% more votes than their current vote share predicts.)
That still won't get them the 28 or so seats the over/unders suggest. Continue to sell.
22% got them 62 seats in 2005? 18% got them 52 seats in 2001? 16.8% got them 46 seats in 1997.
1st time incumbency and some huge margins to make up vs a party in the forties, makes the leavey SW tough.
Bath is by far the easiest seat.
The shire saloon-bar frothy-mouthers and the white van EU-haters do not characterise more than a tiny part of the leave vote. Most of them are soft leavers now apprehensive about the consequences of what they have done, and potentially receptive to the LibDem pitch. The South West more than most places has good reason to be apprehensive.
The bookmakers are still all too generous with their LibDem over/unders.
Let's put this in context for a moment. If things go really, really well for the LibDems, they might get 18%. Sod it, say 20%. (That's 60 or 70% more votes than their current vote share predicts.)
That still won't get them the 28 or so seats the over/unders suggest. Continue to sell.
22% got them 62 seats in 2005? 18% got them 52 seats in 2001? 16.8% got them 46 seats in 1997.
What did all those years have in common?
Would you like to compare LibDem seat outcomes when it is the conservative party in ascendence?
Re the LibDems: What is clear from by-election results is that, if they put a lot of ground-level activity in, they can make themselves relevant even if nationally they are not particularly visible. However, they are obviously going to have to concentrate their resources in seats they can realistically win.
How far up the potential target list of seats they mislaid in 2015 will they put serious effort into?
The bookmakers are still all too generous with their LibDem over/unders.
Let's put this in context for a moment. If things go really, really well for the LibDems, they might get 18%. Sod it, say 20%. (That's 60 or 70% more votes than their current vote share predicts.)
That still won't get them the 28 or so seats the over/unders suggest. Continue to sell.
22% got them 62 seats in 2005? 18% got them 52 seats in 2001? 16.8% got them 46 seats in 1997.
1st time incumbency and some huge margins to make up vs a party in the forties, makes the leavey SW tough.
Bath is by far the easiest seat.
The shire saloon-bar frothy-mouthers and the white van EU-haters do not characterise more than a tiny part of the leave vote. Most of them are soft leavers now apprehensive about the consequences of what they have done, and potentially receptive to the LibDem pitch. The South West more than most places has good reason to be apprehensive.
Sure but to come back in places like Somerton & Frome is almost impossible this election. I'm not saying there aren't targets but they are very tough. Even Yeovil is very tricky.
Wales opinion poll due Monday. I'm hearing very good news for you Tories. Labour could lose 10 seats to Tories and Plaid. Pass me the sick bag
I printed a load of leaflets for a Labour candidate in the local elections. She said it's a struggle on the doorsteps. If I were a Lab candidate in Wales I'd be pushing forward Carwyn Jones as my leader and not bringing attention to Lab in Westminster. Jones is pretty charismatic.
The bookmakers are still all too generous with their LibDem over/unders.
Let's put this in context for a moment. If things go really, really well for the LibDems, they might get 18%. Sod it, say 20%. (That's 60 or 70% more votes than their current vote share predicts.)
That still won't get them the 28 or so seats the over/unders suggest. Continue to sell.
22% got them 62 seats in 2005? 18% got them 52 seats in 2001? 16.8% got them 46 seats in 1997.
But that was with a weak Tory Party (23% got them 57 in 2010). And, in truth, that's still where the low-hanging fruit is for the Lib Dems.
This election, they'll be trying to rubbish the Conservative "Corbyn's Coalition of Chaos" talk as utterly implausible, because they desperately need the sort of people who think a Conservative Government is basically alright, but if the hospital's under threat they want a Lib Dem MP. If those people flee in terror to Theresa, they'll not make progress.
Incidentally, "Corbyn's Coalition of Chaos" is a good band name if Jez happens to need a new career later in the year.
Wales opinion poll due Monday. I'm hearing very good news for you Tories. Labour could lose 10 seats to Tories and Plaid. Pass me the sick bag
I printed a load of leaflets for a Labour candidate in the local elections. She said it's a struggle on the doorsteps. If I were a Lab candidate in Wales I'd be pushing forward Carwyn Jones as my leader and not bringing attention to Lab in Westminster. Jones is pretty charismatic.
I'm a Labour man but I've never been fussed on Carwyn. Agree though he needs to step up to the plate now.
An over/under of 28.5 and LibDems to gain Bath at 5/4 are both wrong. It is hard to imagine many scenarios where you lose both bets, and easy to imagine ones where you win both.
Wales opinion poll due Monday. I'm hearing very good news for you Tories. Labour could lose 10 seats to Tories and Plaid. Pass me the sick bag
I printed a load of leaflets for a Labour candidate in the local elections. She said it's a struggle on the doorsteps. If I were a Lab candidate in Wales I'd be pushing forward Carwyn Jones as my leader and not bringing attention to Lab in Westminster. Jones is pretty charismatic.
He was having a hard time of it a couple of nights ago with the voters on ITV Wales and did not seem to be enjoying it. If there is a poll coming out I would expect it to be bad news for labour
The bookmakers are still all too generous with their LibDem over/unders.
Let's put this in context for a moment. If things go really, really well for the LibDems, they might get 18%. Sod it, say 20%. (That's 60 or 70% more votes than their current vote share predicts.)
That still won't get them the 28 or so seats the over/unders suggest. Continue to sell.
22% got them 62 seats in 2005? 18% got them 52 seats in 2001? 16.8% got them 46 seats in 1997.
But that was with a weak Tory Party (23% got them 57 in 2010). And, in truth, that's still where the low-hanging fruit is for the Lib Dems.
This election, they'll be trying to rubbish the Conservative "Corbyn's Coalition of Chaos" talk as utterly implausible, because they desperately need the sort of people who think a Conservative Government is basically alright, but if the hospital's under threat they want a Lib Dem MP. If those people flee in terror to Theresa, they'll not make progress.
Incidentally, "Corbyn's Coalition of Chaos" is a good band name if Jez happens to need a new career later in the year.
Presumably their pitch in Richmond, Twickenham, Kingston & Surbiton, Bath, Lewes, Eastbourne, etc., is wouldn't you rather the Tories were forced into coalition with us rather than governing on their own?
Re the LibDems: What is clear from by-election results is that, if they put a lot of ground-level activity in, they can make themselves relevant even if nationally they are not particularly visible. However, they are obviously going to have to concentrate their resources in seats they can realistically win.
How far up the potential target list of seats they mislaid in 2015 will they put serious effort into?
That is going to be the key, and very tough, call for the LibDems. From what I hear on the grapevine the net right now is being cast relatively wide, which is brave. One seat I know of is expecting second target status when their chance of winning is negligible IMHO. I expect there'll be a review after the locals and I just hope that the greater tendency for people to back hard working LibDems locally, but not nationally, is factored into the equation. At the moment the LibDems are being overwhelmed by new members (going on +10% in just a week) and offers of help, including from many disillusioned Labour folk. Whether this can give the party national forward momentum remains to be seen.
Here's an excellent example of trying to map Holyrood results to Westminster
The highlighted area is Westminster Banff and Buchan, the thin strip with the black outline is the Holyrood constituency.
While those points are excellent, the LibDems are still going to win Edinburgh West and NE Fife.
Edinburgh West is actually a really good fit with the Holyrood constituency. Other Edinburgh seats not so much due to the massive changes not having Edinburgh Central makes.
Re the LibDems: What is clear from by-election results is that, if they put a lot of ground-level activity in, they can make themselves relevant even if nationally they are not particularly visible. However, they are obviously going to have to concentrate their resources in seats they can realistically win.
How far up the potential target list of seats they mislaid in 2015 will they put serious effort into?
In 2015, until far too late, the Lib Dems had properly dropped only one seat as a target (I won't name it, but not too hard to work out if you really want to). They were downplaying others somewhat, but only one was cut adrift.
That was, with hindsight, utter folly to the point of being incomprehensible. I think they feel that very acutely and, if anything, will set their sights too low.
Re the LibDems: What is clear from by-election results is that, if they put a lot of ground-level activity in, they can make themselves relevant even if nationally they are not particularly visible. However, they are obviously going to have to concentrate their resources in seats they can realistically win.
How far up the potential target list of seats they mislaid in 2015 will they put serious effort into?
In 2015, until far too late, the Lib Dems had properly dropped only one seat as a target (I won't name it, but not too hard to work out if you really want to). They were downplaying others somewhat, but only one was cut adrift.
That was, with hindsight, utter folly to the point of being incomprehensible. I think they feel that very acutely and, if anything, will set their sights too low.
The bookmakers are still all too generous with their LibDem over/unders.
Let's put this in context for a moment. If things go really, really well for the LibDems, they might get 18%. Sod it, say 20%. (That's 60 or 70% more votes than their current vote share predicts.)
That still won't get them the 28 or so seats the over/unders suggest. Continue to sell.
22% got them 62 seats in 2005? 18% got them 52 seats in 2001? 16.8% got them 46 seats in 1997.
What did all those years have in common?
Would you like to compare LibDem seat outcomes when it is the conservative party in ascendence?
I don't disagree with the main point that's it's unlikely Lib Dems will do as well as markets suggest. But i think they could certainly get over 28 seats with 20% of the vote. 23% got them fifty odd seats in 2010.
That is going to be the key, and very tough, call for the LibDems. From what I hear on the grapevine the net right now is being cast relatively wide, which is brave. One seat I know of is expecting second target status when their chance of winning is negligible IMHO.
This surprises me. Is it a seat which is geographically isolated (i.e. might as well have a pop because the activists aren't realistically going to travel that far and 2022 needs targets too)?
If not, then it does indeed sound brave. The test will come in cutting recently held seats in clumps like SW London and Cornwall in order to go after the rest. There will be howls of pain if (and this is purely hypothetical - no knowledge of it) they pull the plug on North Cornwall to double down on St Austell. Ditto if people are told to down tools in Kingston to go to Sutton etc.
The bookmakers are still all too generous with their LibDem over/unders.
Let's put this in context for a moment. If things go really, really well for the LibDems, they might get 18%. Sod it, say 20%. (That's 60 or 70% more votes than their current vote share predicts.)
That still won't get them the 28 or so seats the over/unders suggest. Continue to sell.
22% got them 62 seats in 2005? 18% got them 52 seats in 2001? 16.8% got them 46 seats in 1997.
The Lib Dems are rebuilding slowly from a very low base; much more to the point, there are very few target seats available to them on small swings, and most of those are held by the Tories.
The Tories, lest we forget, were in a complete state in 1997 and 2001, and by the time they were picking themselves up off the floor in 2005 the Lib Dems were entrenched incumbents in the seats they already held, benefited from a reasonably popular leader, and could exploit the post-Iraq War decline in Labour support.
With the Conservatives now wiping the floor with both Labour and Ukip, and recording 40%+ positions in virtually all of the polls, things are very different. Available polling evidence also suggests that the Lib Dem vote, which is as soft as butter, is peeling off to the Conservatives very nearly as fast as the limited pool of distraught Tory Europhile voters moves in the opposite direction: The improvement in the Lib Dems' position since the referendum is predominantly down to net movement of 2015 voters from Labour.
The Lib Dems are not going to get anywhere near either the seat count or the vote share they won under Clegg in 2010. Continuity Remain sentiment is bound to help them in constituencies which were very pro-EU, but again the number of those where they are anywhere close to being competitive is very limited, and we also have to consider that the Tories are now sitting on substantial majorities in most of the Lib Dems' former South-West heartland seats - nearly all of which are both Leave-majority, and contain substantial numbers of Ukip votes for the Conservatives to mine.
The Liberal Democrats currently hold nine seats, and there are sixteen others in total which are available to them on swings of under 5%. If they hold everything they have - not exactly a foregone conclusion in itself - and they win all of those targets that still only gets them to 25. The sub-5% targets are largely promising, e.g. seats in West London and in Avon-as-was, but even amongst those there are some difficulties (e.g. Torbay,) and beyond them things get progressively more difficult for the yellows.
I'll stick to my instincts - and what the evidence tells me - on this one. I think the Lib Dems will be having a very good night if they can get north of 20 seats in total, and I think 30 is beyond them.
I did a quick mover/stayer matrix model on seats using current polls, remain % & 2015 results. Ended up with below, which I guess is close to current consensus? NI excluded. UKIP lose one, Green, Plaid static.
Con 385 +54 (win 59 from LAB, 3 from SNP, 1 from UKIP; lose 9 to LD) Lab 164 -68 (no wins, lose 59 to CON, 8 to LD, 1 to SNP) LD 28 +19 (win 8 from LAB, 9 from CON, 3 from SNP) SNP 51 -5 (win 1 from LAB; lose 3 to CON, 3 to LAB)
Tweeted a cartogram map of the battlegrounds to show where the changes are likely to happen.
By the way, to share the latest from Betfair following my complaint about their cancelling the high odds Tory hold Wokingham bet yesterday afternoon. Bit of a strange reply: they say they can't actually cancel bets without customer agreement, then offer me a free £2 bet as compensation for cancelling it.
Moving a bet from "open" to "void" is a unilateral cancellation on their part (since the overall market is clearly still in play) in my book, and I have responded accordingly. WTS.
Sportsbook? And how high were the odds?
60/1
Was probably supposed to be 1/60. Very poor form to cancel legitimately placed bets though.
All the other shire Tory seats were being put up at 1/200. The 60/1 was only available or a second or two - obviously I went back for more and it was already suspended. Half an hour later it was up again at 1/200. But very bad form on their part, for sure.
The Tories are still 1/14 in Aldershot which been Conservative since it was created in 1918.
If The Tories really are on 45% the LDs are going to struggle to take any Con seats at all.
No real evidence for this... But my gut says Cameron was more popular with LD- leaning voters and May less so? Easier for me to imagine May being a very effective anti labour leader...
The bookmakers are still all too generous with their LibDem over/unders.
Let's put this in context for a moment. If things go really, really well for the LibDems, they might get 18%. Sod it, say 20%. (That's 60 or 70% more votes than their current vote share predicts.)
That still won't get them the 28 or so seats the over/unders suggest. Continue to sell.
22% got them 62 seats in 2005? 18% got them 52 seats in 2001? 16.8% got them 46 seats in 1997.
1st time incumbency and some huge margins to make up vs a party in the forties, makes the leavey SW tough.
Bath is by far the easiest seat.
The shire saloon-bar frothy-mouthers and the white van EU-haters do not characterise more than a tiny part of the leave vote. Most of them are soft leavers now apprehensive about the consequences of what they have done, and potentially receptive to the LibDem pitch. The South West more than most places has good reason to be apprehensive.
Sure but to come back in places like Somerton & Frome is almost impossible this election. I'm not saying there aren't targets but they are very tough. Even Yeovil is very tricky.
There are - realistically - four SNP targets (of which they'll win two relatively easily, the others are much harder), seven Labour targets (every seat where the LDs are less than 20% behind, of which only two look relatively likely), and perhaps six Conservative seats. With the Conservatives surging in the polls, UKIP likely to not stand in many seats, and with so many of the LDs prospects in Leaverstan, I really struggle to see many pickups.
Really helpful Alastair but the majority % in the right hand column is the absolute lead so I presume these numbers need to be halved to work out the swing required? At the moment we seem to have a swing of 7% or so, arguably 8% so everything down to Birmingham Yardley is vulnerable?
There will be greater than average swings in some seats (and less than average swings in others). I would keep looking a lot further down the list before deciding all seats below that point were safe.
I have taken a number of bets on 128th placed Vauxhall falling to the fourth placed Liberal Democrats.
In the interests of full disclosure - I'm standing again. If pushed I would also be on Robert's side of the bet than on the Lib Dems. For one thing all the activists are going to be next door with Simon Hughes.
Jim Pickard @PickardJE 26m26 minutes ago More Pro-Len McCluskey source: "There will be a lot of Blairites crying into their Peroni and Chablis tonight."
Odd mixture, Peroni and Chablis. Always wondered why Brown stuck to water at the Granita restaurant all those years ago.
If The Tories really are on 45% the LDs are going to struggle to take any Con seats at all.
I know the road is littered with the bodies of people who said "it's different this time" but surely it's not just possible but likely that the Tories will make hay in strongly Leave constituencies narrowly won by Labour in 2015, whilst suffering in strongly Remain constituencies won from the Lib Dems (SW London, university towns like Bath)?
Although I do think the good prospects for the Lib Dems are fewer than many Lib Dems think - there's not a lot fitting the pattern I describe in the old SW England heartland.
Edit: Although I'd add 45%+ really does look bad for everyone without a blue rosette. It'd have to dip a bit based on reversion to the mean and "foregone conclusion" syndrome in order for more than a tiny handful to change columns.
I did a quick mover/stayer matrix model on seats using current polls, remain % & 2015 results. Ended up with below, which I guess is close to current consensus? NI excluded. UKIP lose one, Green, Plaid static.
Con 385 +54 (win 59 from LAB, 3 from SNP, 1 from UKIP; lose 9 to LD) Lab 164 -68 (no wins, lose 59 to CON, 8 to LD, 1 to SNP) LD 28 +19 (win 8 from LAB, 9 from CON, 3 from SNP) SNP 51 -5 (win 1 from LAB; lose 3 to CON, 3 to LAB)
Tweeted a cartogram map of the battlegrounds to show where the changes are likely to happen.
If The Tories really are on 45% the LDs are going to struggle to take any Con seats at all.
I think they'll do OK in Deepest Remainia, especially if there is a big Labour vote to squeeze. Still, it's hard to see more than three or four pickups. (And there are a few seats, like North Norfolk and even Carshalton, which look vulnerable.)
That is going to be the key, and very tough, call for the LibDems. From what I hear on the grapevine the net right now is being cast relatively wide, which is brave. One seat I know of is expecting second target status when their chance of winning is negligible IMHO.
This surprises me. Is it a seat which is geographically isolated (i.e. might as well have a pop because the activists aren't realistically going to travel that far and 2022 needs targets too)?
If not, then it does indeed sound brave. The test will come in cutting recently held seats in clumps like SW London and Cornwall in order to go after the rest. There will be howls of pain if (and this is purely hypothetical - no knowledge of it) they pull the plug on North Cornwall to double down on St Austell. Ditto if people are told to down tools in Kingston to go to Sutton etc.
There's an argument that the LDs should focus on targets that voted Remain. For example every seat in Cornwall voted Leave except Truro & Falmouth so perhaps they should put most of their resources into the battle there, even though the Tory majority is larger than St Ives.
I did a quick mover/stayer matrix model on seats using current polls, remain % & 2015 results. Ended up with below, which I guess is close to current consensus? NI excluded. UKIP lose one, Green, Plaid static.
Con 385 +54 (win 59 from LAB, 3 from SNP, 1 from UKIP; lose 9 to LD) Lab 164 -68 (no wins, lose 59 to CON, 8 to LD, 1 to SNP) LD 28 +19 (win 8 from LAB, 9 from CON, 3 from SNP) SNP 51 -5 (win 1 from LAB; lose 3 to CON, 3 to LAB)
Tweeted a cartogram map of the battlegrounds to show where the changes are likely to happen.
I presume that should say 3 SNP losses to the Lib Dems, not Labour? I don't think anyone is currently predicting any Labour gains in Scotland at all. Indeed the words "in Scotland" might be redundant there.
If The Tories really are on 45% the LDs are going to struggle to take any Con seats at all.
If the Tory poll rating turns into a positive endorsement of the PM's platform and Brexit stance, then I fear you may be right. If, on the other hand, the poll rating simply reflects that Corbyn is unfit to be PM, and the fact that he simply cannot and will not win becomes very clear during the coming long campaign, then all bets are off...
Jim Pickard @PickardJE 26m26 minutes ago More Pro-Len McCluskey source: "There will be a lot of Blairites crying into their Peroni and Chablis tonight."
Odd mixture, Peroni and Chablis. Always wondered why Brown stuck to water at the Granita restaurant all those years ago.
If The Tories really are on 45% the LDs are going to struggle to take any Con seats at all.
I know the road is littered with the bodies of people who said "it's different this time" but surely it's not just possible but likely that the Tories will make hay in strongly Leave constituencies narrowly won by Labour in 2015, whilst suffering in strongly Remain constituencies won from the Lib Dems (SW London, university towns like Bath)?
How many university towns are held by the Tories ? Just Bath & OXWAB, I think.
Hmmm. Red marginals (esp. super marginals, whatever they are) outnumber blue ones by quite a margin.
I set the marginals class using a matrix of winner 15/ second place 15 & current swings. So a Labour/Con super-marginal goes up to an 8% 2015 margin, but a Con/Lab super-marginal doesn't exist. Did this to try and get a true view of where the battles will happen.
That is going to be the key, and very tough, call for the LibDems. From what I hear on the grapevine the net right now is being cast relatively wide, which is brave. One seat I know of is expecting second target status when their chance of winning is negligible IMHO.
This surprises me. Is it a seat which is geographically isolated (i.e. might as well have a pop because the activists aren't realistically going to travel that far and 2022 needs targets too)?
If not, then it does indeed sound brave. The test will come in cutting recently held seats in clumps like SW London and Cornwall in order to go after the rest. There will be howls of pain if (and this is purely hypothetical - no knowledge of it) they pull the plug on North Cornwall to double down on St Austell. Ditto if people are told to down tools in Kingston to go to Sutton etc.
There's an argument that the LDs should focus on targets that voted Remain. For example every seat in Cornwall voted Leave except Truro & Falmouth so perhaps they should put most of their resources into the battle there, even though the Tory majority is larger than St Ives.
I see the argument, although the local elections since June suggest there's more to life than Remain/Leave.
Lib Dems seem to be doing well (even better) in seats with a non-trivial minority of Remainers compared with Remania heartlands. There will also be seats with a pretty popular Lib Dem MP and weak-ish replacement who have a bit of buyer's remorse. And there will be seats where it's all "local A&E under threat!" and Europe is so last year.
I did a quick mover/stayer matrix model on seats using current polls, remain % & 2015 results. Ended up with below, which I guess is close to current consensus? NI excluded. UKIP lose one, Green, Plaid static.
Con 385 +54 (win 59 from LAB, 3 from SNP, 1 from UKIP; lose 9 to LD) Lab 164 -68 (no wins, lose 59 to CON, 8 to LD, 1 to SNP) LD 28 +19 (win 8 from LAB, 9 from CON, 3 from SNP) SNP 51 -5 (win 1 from LAB; lose 3 to CON, 3 to LAB)
Tweeted a cartogram map of the battlegrounds to show where the changes are likely to happen.
I presume that should say 3 SNP losses to the Lib Dems, not Labour? I don't think anyone is currently predicting any Labour gains in Scotland at all. Indeed the words "in Scotland" might be redundant there.
What the Lib Dems really need is some polling suggesting that they are closing the gap on Labour. If Labour start to poll near 20 it will give them a real lift. But they have always been better at attacking Tory seats than Labour ones. I fear that will do them little good this time. Labour are a juicy corpse and they need to eat their share, lentil eating vegetarians or no.
I did a quick mover/stayer matrix model on seats using current polls, remain % & 2015 results. Ended up with below, which I guess is close to current consensus? NI excluded. UKIP lose one, Green, Plaid static.
Con 385 +54 (win 59 from LAB, 3 from SNP, 1 from UKIP; lose 9 to LD) Lab 164 -68 (no wins, lose 59 to CON, 8 to LD, 1 to SNP) LD 28 +19 (win 8 from LAB, 9 from CON, 3 from SNP) SNP 51 -5 (win 1 from LAB; lose 3 to CON, 3 to LAB)
Tweeted a cartogram map of the battlegrounds to show where the changes are likely to happen.
I agree with Black Rook on the LDs. Another thing to remember is that back in the Blair era, the LDs were one of the big 3 which guaranteed them a lot of media coverage. Now they are grouped with the SNP and UKIP in the 2nd tier bucket, which will make it harder to get their message across.
Hmmm. Red marginals (esp. super marginals, whatever they are) outnumber blue ones by quite a margin.
I set the marginals class using a matrix of winner 15/ second place 15 & current swings. So a Labour/Con super-marginal goes up to an 8% 2015 margin, but a Con/Lab super-marginal doesn't exist. Did this to try and get a true view of where the battles will happen.
So you applied UNS to the GE results (1st & 2nd place only) and looked at how close the 'new' results are? [Yes, I should have read the original post properly!]
Quite amusing - I confess I have occasionally wondered at the story of the people who stand behind politicians and hold placards. Sometimes its a rough business to do so clearly, and some worse than others (The Edstone springs to mind).
If The Tories really are on 45% the LDs are going to struggle to take any Con seats at all.
I know the road is littered with the bodies of people who said "it's different this time" but surely it's not just possible but likely that the Tories will make hay in strongly Leave constituencies narrowly won by Labour in 2015, whilst suffering in strongly Remain constituencies won from the Lib Dems (SW London, university towns like Bath)?
How many university towns are held by the Tories ? Just Bath & OXWAB, I think.
There’s the problem.
Portsmouth South? Colchester? And there are ones you wouldn't think of with a fair student population - University of Gloucestershire is a small but non-trivial one mainly in Cheltenham for example.
That is going to be the key, and very tough, call for the LibDems. From what I hear on the grapevine the net right now is being cast relatively wide, which is brave. One seat I know of is expecting second target status when their chance of winning is negligible IMHO.
This surprises me. Is it a seat which is geographically isolated (i.e. might as well have a pop because the activists aren't realistically going to travel that far and 2022 needs targets too)?
If not, then it does indeed sound brave. The test will come in cutting recently held seats in clumps like SW London and Cornwall in order to go after the rest. There will be howls of pain if (and this is purely hypothetical - no knowledge of it) they pull the plug on North Cornwall to double down on St Austell. Ditto if people are told to down tools in Kingston to go to Sutton etc.
No. I will only share that it's an urban seat with a pro-Brexit Labour MP (not Vauxhall, lest Robert get unduly interested).
The Liberal psyche combines a learned and ingrained understanding of the cruel harshness of our FPTnP voting system for any party with evenly distributed support, with a dream that the bankruptcy of Labour's negative union-funded class-war approach to opposing the Tories will one day be exposed for all to see. The challenge we face is that both are now true at the same time.
I could vote for either. Any news of Balls. He is the one everyone is waiting for.
I think Balls has indicated he will not stand I case it prejudices his wife's hopes of leading the party. And yes, I voted for her in the leadership election and would again.
Thanks for all the amazing tips over the last couple of days. Have to sell the house if labour do well!!
Just wondering what folk think about waiting until the locals before selling Lib Dem seats? Think they'll do well and the lines might go up as a result? Slightly scared of committing now in case Labour go into total meltdown and they swap vote shares with Lib Dems!!
If The Tories really are on 45% the LDs are going to struggle to take any Con seats at all.
I know the road is littered with the bodies of people who said "it's different this time" but surely it's not just possible but likely that the Tories will make hay in strongly Leave constituencies narrowly won by Labour in 2015, whilst suffering in strongly Remain constituencies won from the Lib Dems (SW London, university towns like Bath)?
How many university towns are held by the Tories ? Just Bath & OXWAB, I think.
There’s the problem.
Portsmouth South? Colchester? And there are ones you wouldn't think of with a fair student population - University of Gloucestershire is a small but non-trivial one mainly in Cheltenham for example.
Hmmm. Red marginals (esp. super marginals, whatever they are) outnumber blue ones by quite a margin.
I set the marginals class using a matrix of winner 15/ second place 15 & current swings. So a Labour/Con super-marginal goes up to an 8% 2015 margin, but a Con/Lab super-marginal doesn't exist. Did this to try and get a true view of where the battles will happen.
Many thanks, that looks excellent.
Any chance of putting up the data somewhere so we can have a play with various assumptions?
I agree with Black Rook on the LDs. Another thing to remember is that back in the Blair era, the LDs were one of the big 3 which guaranteed them a lot of media coverage. Now they are grouped with the SNP and UKIP in the 2nd tier bucket, which will make it harder to get their message across.
That's only partly right. When Ofcom reviewed it in 2015 (for the purposes of election broadcasts and due impartiality) they actually decided Conservative, Labour and Lib Dems remained the only GB-wide "major" parties, that UKIP became "major" in England & Wales only, and that the SNP and Plaid remained major only where they stood (and Greens, to their huge anger, were deemed not to be major at all).
Now that doesn't give the Lib Dems a right to hold a stopwatch and demand equal time with Labour and Tories - that's not how the impartiality rules work. And it's clear others get more coverage than in the past for sensible reasons. But the tiers you describe aren't actually right and Farron can anticipate a reasonably large boost in coverage in May/June (this is TV and radio of course - newspapers are a different ball game).
I agree with Black Rook on the LDs. Another thing to remember is that back in the Blair era, the LDs were one of the big 3 which guaranteed them a lot of media coverage. Now they are grouped with the SNP and UKIP in the 2nd tier bucket, which will make it harder to get their message across.
Obviously true, although I've always thought of Con/Lab/LD as the big two-and-a-half. Except, of course, that the SNP are now the half instead.
If The Tories really are on 45% the LDs are going to struggle to take any Con seats at all.
I know the road is littered with the bodies of people who said "it's different this time" but surely it's not just possible but likely that the Tories will make hay in strongly Leave constituencies narrowly won by Labour in 2015, whilst suffering in strongly Remain constituencies won from the Lib Dems (SW London, university towns like Bath)?
How many university towns are held by the Tories ? Just Bath & OXWAB, I think.
There’s the problem.
Portsmouth South? Colchester? And there are ones you wouldn't think of with a fair student population - University of Gloucestershire is a small but non-trivial one mainly in Cheltenham for example.
They're all possibles, but you're starting to get into slightly larger swing territory there - and nor ought we to forget that (a) the very young (apart from being the worst at turning out to vote in the first place) are also the most likely to still back Labour; (b) it's not just the Lib Dems who are likely to be putting on votes in these places, it's the Tories as well - which means that the Liberal Democrats need to put on very substantial numbers of votes to capture the seats; (c) we shouldn't assume that anywhere close to all potential Labour defectors (let alone those from Ukip) are going to be tempted by the Lib Dems rather than the Tories; and (d) Portsmouth and Colchester both voted to Leave, the former heavily.
Cheltenham, which is a Remain area and where over 75% of all the votes were collected by either the Tories or Lib Dems in 2015, looks a little more promising.
I could vote for either. Any news of Balls. He is the one everyone is waiting for.
I think Balls has indicated he will not stand I case it prejudices his wife's hopes of leading the party. And yes, I voted for her in the leadership election and would again.
I have voted for Balls and Cooper - different times, of course.
The big takeaway from the Unite election is that under McCluskey the union has lost nearly 500,000 members. Unison - which is far less Corbyn friendly - is now the UK's biggest union.
Labour tweeting they are missing 411 candidates and appealing for applicants to stand for them
Funny. Could've sworn someone mentioned that they were the biggest mass movement in Western Europe, in the Free World, outside the Red Army etc etc.
I wonder if they've run the rule over some Momentum-types and decided their lifelong membership of the Socialist Worker Party and tweets on subjects as eclectic as vegan recipes, complex questions of Palestinian nationhood, and Jeremy Hunt's Mum make them unsuitable at this time to put before the good people of Surrey Heath? Just a thought.
Thanks for all the amazing tips over the last couple of days. Have to sell the house if labour do well!!
Just wondering what folk think about waiting until the locals before selling Lib Dem seats? Think they'll do well and the lines might go up as a result? Slightly scared of committing now in case Labour go into total meltdown and they swap vote shares with Lib Dems!!
I don't think there's any chance of Labour swapping GE votes shared with the LDs, but I do think that whatever happens in the locals people will overreact, and that will present opportunities as (perhaps) the LDs surge in council contests or Lab hold on surprisingly well.
I did a quick mover/stayer matrix model on seats using current polls, remain % & 2015 results. Ended up with below, which I guess is close to current consensus? NI excluded. UKIP lose one, Green, Plaid static.
Con 385 +54 (win 59 from LAB, 3 from SNP, 1 from UKIP; lose 9 to LD) Lab 164 -68 (no wins, lose 59 to CON, 8 to LD, 1 to SNP) LD 28 +19 (win 8 from LAB, 9 from CON, 3 from SNP) SNP 51 -5 (win 1 from LAB; lose 3 to CON, 3 to LAB)
Tweeted a cartogram map of the battlegrounds to show where the changes are likely to happen.
Interesting. It looks like the biggest concentrations of Labour seats liable to fall to the Tories are in the North of England and Wales, rather than the Midlands? That's because a lot of the potential Labour seats in the Midlands are already Tory.
Philip Hammond really does have an appalling touch, doesn't he?
Doesn't seem to read the mood properly on anything.
I tend to agree - if Mrs may wins a big majority I hope she will consider switching him to another job, especially after the mess he made of the budget.
I did a quick mover/stayer matrix model on seats using current polls, remain % & 2015 results. Ended up with below, which I guess is close to current consensus? NI excluded. UKIP lose one, Green, Plaid static.
Con 385 +54 (win 59 from LAB, 3 from SNP, 1 from UKIP; lose 9 to LD) Lab 164 -68 (no wins, lose 59 to CON, 8 to LD, 1 to SNP) LD 28 +19 (win 8 from LAB, 9 from CON, 3 from SNP) SNP 51 -5 (win 1 from LAB; lose 3 to CON, 3 to LAB)
Tweeted a cartogram map of the battlegrounds to show where the changes are likely to happen.
Interesting. It looks like the biggest concentrations of Labour seats liable to fall to the Tories are in the North of England and Wales, rather than the Midlands? That's because a lot of the potential Labour seats in the Midlands are already Tory.
Welsh poll due out on monday suggest 10 labour loses mainly to the conservatives
Labour tweeting they are missing 411 candidates and appealing for applicants to stand for them
Some proper nutters are going to slip through the cracks.
Possibly. I think in fact they will prevail upon the likes of Cllr. Fred Muckelthwaite MBE - a stalwart of the party, one-time Methodist lay preacher (let go for being a bit dull and worthy) and parish councillor for a Durham mining community since the days of Gaitskell - to fly the flag in leafy Bucks. If they've any bloomin' sense left they will, anyway.
Nitpick, perhaps, but shouldn't this story be 'has confined himself'?
The US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, says arresting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is a "priority". Mr Assange has been confined to London's Ecuadorian embassy, where he has asylum, for almost five years.
The big takeaway from the Unite election is that under McCluskey the union has lost nearly 500,000 members. Unison - which is far less Corbyn friendly - is now the UK's biggest union.
Wow .... that's mega! I wonder if his salary has gone down commensurately, now that he has so many fewer members to look after? No ..... not at all? Has it increased?
I could vote for either. Any news of Balls. He is the one everyone is waiting for.
I think Balls has indicated he will not stand I case it prejudices his wife's hopes of leading the party. And yes, I voted for her in the leadership election and would again.
I have voted for Balls and Cooper - different times, of course.
Wales opinion poll due Monday. I'm hearing very good news for you Tories. Labour could lose 10 seats to Tories and Plaid. Pass me the sick bag
There's been recent commentary on this. It's certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility that Labour could be totally wiped out in North Wales, and fail to win a majority of all Welsh seats for the first time since 1931.
A projection made at the start of the year on the proposed revised boundaries suggested that the Welsh Tories could reach near parity with Labour, if the polling figures then available were replicated at a General Election. Given the trend GB-wide, it's not inconceivable that Welsh Labour's situation may have worsened since then.
Comments
Would you like to compare LibDem seat outcomes when it is the conservative party in ascendence?
How far up the potential target list of seats they mislaid in 2015 will they put serious effort into?
This election, they'll be trying to rubbish the Conservative "Corbyn's Coalition of Chaos" talk as utterly implausible, because they desperately need the sort of people who think a Conservative Government is basically alright, but if the hospital's under threat they want a Lib Dem MP. If those people flee in terror to Theresa, they'll not make progress.
Incidentally, "Corbyn's Coalition of Chaos" is a good band name if Jez happens to need a new career later in the year.
https://www.sportingindex.com/spread-betting/politics/british/group_b.ebb77a08-5cd6-4e69-9096-cdc826441491/uk-general-election-seats-markets
*sighs*
North East Fife is almost a 1-for-1 fit as well.
That was, with hindsight, utter folly to the point of being incomprehensible. I think they feel that very acutely and, if anything, will set their sights too low.
But i think they could certainly get over 28 seats with 20% of the vote.
23% got them fifty odd seats in 2010.
If not, then it does indeed sound brave. The test will come in cutting recently held seats in clumps like SW London and Cornwall in order to go after the rest. There will be howls of pain if (and this is purely hypothetical - no knowledge of it) they pull the plug on North Cornwall to double down on St Austell. Ditto if people are told to down tools in Kingston to go to Sutton etc.
The Tories, lest we forget, were in a complete state in 1997 and 2001, and by the time they were picking themselves up off the floor in 2005 the Lib Dems were entrenched incumbents in the seats they already held, benefited from a reasonably popular leader, and could exploit the post-Iraq War decline in Labour support.
With the Conservatives now wiping the floor with both Labour and Ukip, and recording 40%+ positions in virtually all of the polls, things are very different. Available polling evidence also suggests that the Lib Dem vote, which is as soft as butter, is peeling off to the Conservatives very nearly as fast as the limited pool of distraught Tory Europhile voters moves in the opposite direction: The improvement in the Lib Dems' position since the referendum is predominantly down to net movement of 2015 voters from Labour.
The Lib Dems are not going to get anywhere near either the seat count or the vote share they won under Clegg in 2010. Continuity Remain sentiment is bound to help them in constituencies which were very pro-EU, but again the number of those where they are anywhere close to being competitive is very limited, and we also have to consider that the Tories are now sitting on substantial majorities in most of the Lib Dems' former South-West heartland seats - nearly all of which are both Leave-majority, and contain substantial numbers of Ukip votes for the Conservatives to mine.
The Liberal Democrats currently hold nine seats, and there are sixteen others in total which are available to them on swings of under 5%. If they hold everything they have - not exactly a foregone conclusion in itself - and they win all of those targets that still only gets them to 25. The sub-5% targets are largely promising, e.g. seats in West London and in Avon-as-was, but even amongst those there are some difficulties (e.g. Torbay,) and beyond them things get progressively more difficult for the yellows.
I'll stick to my instincts - and what the evidence tells me - on this one. I think the Lib Dems will be having a very good night if they can get north of 20 seats in total, and I think 30 is beyond them.
Con 385 +54 (win 59 from LAB, 3 from SNP, 1 from UKIP; lose 9 to LD)
Lab 164 -68 (no wins, lose 59 to CON, 8 to LD, 1 to SNP)
LD 28 +19 (win 8 from LAB, 9 from CON, 3 from SNP)
SNP 51 -5 (win 1 from LAB; lose 3 to CON, 3 to LAB)
Tweeted a cartogram map of the battlegrounds to show where the changes are likely to happen.
https://twitter.com/Geolytix/status/855439010348638208/photo/1
I think the Labour and Lib Dem seat totals are pretty much bang on the current Ladbrokes over/under lines.
If pushed I would also be on Robert's side of the bet than on the Lib Dems. For one thing all the activists are going to be next door with Simon Hughes.
More
Pro-Len McCluskey source: "There will be a lot of Blairites crying into their Peroni and Chablis tonight."
Odd mixture, Peroni and Chablis. Always wondered why Brown stuck to water at the Granita restaurant all those years ago.
Although I do think the good prospects for the Lib Dems are fewer than many Lib Dems think - there's not a lot fitting the pattern I describe in the old SW England heartland.
Edit: Although I'd add 45%+ really does look bad for everyone without a blue rosette. It'd have to dip a bit based on reversion to the mean and "foregone conclusion" syndrome in order for more than a tiny handful to change columns.
https://twitter.com/theobertram/timelines/855454580234231808
There’s the problem.
Lib Dems seem to be doing well (even better) in seats with a non-trivial minority of Remainers compared with Remania heartlands. There will also be seats with a pretty popular Lib Dem MP and weak-ish replacement who have a bit of buyer's remorse. And there will be seats where it's all "local A&E under threat!" and Europe is so last year.
The Liberal psyche combines a learned and ingrained understanding of the cruel harshness of our FPTnP voting system for any party with evenly distributed support, with a dream that the bankruptcy of Labour's negative union-funded class-war approach to opposing the Tories will one day be exposed for all to see. The challenge we face is that both are now true at the same time.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Thanks for all the amazing tips over the last couple of days. Have to sell the house if labour do well!!
Just wondering what folk think about waiting until the locals before selling Lib Dem seats? Think they'll do well and the lines might go up as a result? Slightly scared of committing now in case Labour go into total meltdown and they swap vote shares with Lib Dems!!
Thanks in advance for any replies.
Also, anyone heard from Double Carpet?
Any chance of putting up the data somewhere so we can have a play with various assumptions?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/10/britain-gets-no-power-from-coal-for-first-time-on-record/ (not a full day!!)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39668889
http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2017/04/taking-stock
Now that doesn't give the Lib Dems a right to hold a stopwatch and demand equal time with Labour and Tories - that's not how the impartiality rules work. And it's clear others get more coverage than in the past for sensible reasons. But the tiers you describe aren't actually right and Farron can anticipate a reasonably large boost in coverage in May/June (this is TV and radio of course - newspapers are a different ball game).
Cheltenham, which is a Remain area and where over 75% of all the votes were collected by either the Tories or Lib Dems in 2015, looks a little more promising.
Doesn't seem to read the mood properly on anything.
I wonder if they've run the rule over some Momentum-types and decided their lifelong membership of the Socialist Worker Party and tweets on subjects as eclectic as vegan recipes, complex questions of Palestinian nationhood, and Jeremy Hunt's Mum make them unsuitable at this time to put before the good people of Surrey Heath? Just a thought.
your countryjezza needs you...The US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, says arresting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is a "priority". Mr Assange has been confined to London's Ecuadorian embassy, where he has asylum, for almost five years.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39663058
A projection made at the start of the year on the proposed revised boundaries suggested that the Welsh Tories could reach near parity with Labour, if the polling figures then available were replicated at a General Election. Given the trend GB-wide, it's not inconceivable that Welsh Labour's situation may have worsened since then.