French turnout (which includes blank and spoiled votes) was at 28.2% by noon, down from 30.7% in 2012.
Do the polling stations give out blank ballots to those who want them?
2012 figures: positive votes: 75.7%; blank or spoiled: 4.7%.
Turnout (positive votes) could be well under 70% this time, maybe even under 65%.
The lower the turnout, the better for Le Pen as her core vote is most likely to turnout but I still expect Macron to win comfortably, though if it is a lower turnout it will likely be closer to a 60% to 40% result than a 65% to 35% result
The 9/4 on a Labour hold in Gedling looks like good value - the Labour vote was very solid at the local elections and the Conservatives have been in decline there for over two decades.
1. General elections and local elections are clean different things. If it were otherwise then Labour would still hold Stevenage and not be 5,000 votes adrift, for example. 2. The Tories need a swing of only just over 3% to take the seat, and the 2015 Ukip vote there was more than double the size of the Labour majority.
You *might* be correct, but if Labour does rescue Gedling it looks almost certainly as if it will be against a tide of other results. Personally, I think that the Tories are in pole position in every Labour seat in their target list down at least as far as Bishop Auckland, save perhaps for a couple of high Remain/low Ukip hold-outs in London, and possibly Hove.
Wasn't Gedling supposed to fall in 2015 as well ?
I don't know about 2015. What I do know is that circumstances have changed somewhat since then.
Gedling is "only" target no.28 for the Conservatives, so it's not ultra, ultra marginal. Yes, if there's a very good ground game from Labour and a sufficient personal vote for the sitting MP (who is ex-shadow cabinet and has been incumbent for 20 years and is not, therefore, obscure) then they might pull it out of the bag. But the current situation favours the Tories.
I think you are right that taxes will have to go up and I have no problem with increasing income tax across the board. What I find reduces the Lib Dem plan to a gimmick is their implication that a 1% rise would make any significant difference to the problems of funding health and social care.
A 1% increase in income tax would raise, I think, somewhere between £5bn and £6bn per annum across the entire UK. The budget from NHS England alone currently stands at £120bn p.a.. I do not know what the costs of social care are but I would suspect that it is at least another £10bn on top. Then add on the relevant costs for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In round figures we are probably looking at a total bill of something approaching £200bn p.a. plus or minus £20bn or so. The money raised by the extra 1% is not going to go very far. In fact once you take out the proportion that will inevitably be lost to the inefficiencies in the system, I doubt any health or social care provider will notice the difference.
How we provide and fund a 1st world health and social care system in the 21st century needs proper debate and a cross-party consensus. It does not need gimmicks dreamed up on the back of a fag packet in advance of an election.
Quite. In my experience politicians of all stripes think things such as:
- They can divide a given sum by the average salary of a nurse and then use that bung of cash to pay for those nurses, forgetting about the need to train them, fit them into the command structure, find them somewhere to work etc.
- They can quote the cost of building a hospital, forgetting that the real cost is running it long term.
- They can fund kit like scanners without needing to worry about maintenance or assessing real need.
As Sir Humphrey once said, you can spend as much as you want on the NHS, as there will always be more need. The trick is spending what money you have efficiently. I can see the attraction of reforming tax such that NI is hypothecated towards healthcare, we can then all agree a funding rate and manage around that.
The relevant point here for elections is that I think voters get this, at an intuitive level. Offering to just spend money on the NHS doesn't impress them that much anymore.
Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times reckons after a straw poll that the Conservatives will hoover up ex-UKIP votes in the south, where they don't need them, but only 20% of them in the north, where they do. Reckons Mrs May will end up no better than she is now.
I can see the piling up votes in safe seats thing being part of what is happening, which might argue against a massive landslide, but there seemsvtoo much going on in places they havevstruggled in the past for that to solely be it.
And has the polling to date not indicated the exact opposite, namely that the Tories are doing much better in Labour held seats than they are in their own?
And the actual results this week in Northumberland, Tees Valley, Cumbria and Derbyshire ie where the medium sized towns are.
Labour are likely to do better than average within the conurbations but we knew that already.
But most of Labour's remaining seats, as of 2015, ARE in conurbations.
The people on VoteUK doing the number-crunching have said there are actually very few Labour-held seats where the Tories beat Labour on Thursday. Even ultra-marginals like Lancaster had Labour marginally ahead. The flipside is that they fell much further behind in Tory-held marginal territory like Stockton South.
I certainly don't think the likes of the West Bromwich seats are at risk but there's no shortage of Grimsbys, Darlingtons, Workingtons and Wrexhams for Labour to lose.
And even in conurbations there are plenty of Labour marginal - nine in London alone which will be lost on any swing over 3%.
You think there will be a 3% swing to the Tories in London ?
The swing will be lower in London and I fancy Westminster N as a Labour hold but there will be at least half a dozen Conservative gains - Labour gains nothing from ramming up its majorities in Hackney and Islington.
How many of these do you think Labour will hold:
Brentford Ealing C Eltham Enfield N Hampstead Harrow Ilford N Tooting Westminster N
Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times reckons after a straw poll that the Conservatives will hoover up ex-UKIP votes in the south, where they don't need them, but only 20% of them in the north, where they do. Reckons Mrs May will end up no better than she is now.
I can see the piling up votes in safe seats thing being part of what is happening, which might argue against a massive landslide, but there seemsvtoo much going on in places they havevstruggled in the past for that to solely be it.
And has the polling to date not indicated the exact opposite, namely that the Tories are doing much better in Labour held seats than they are in their own?
And the actual results this week in Northumberland, Tees Valley, Cumbria and Derbyshire ie where the medium sized towns are.
Labour are likely to do better than average within the conurbations but we knew that already.
But most of Labour's remaining seats, as of 2015, ARE in conurbations.
The people on VoteUK doing the number-crunching have said there are actually very few Labour-held seats where the Tories beat Labour on Thursday. Even ultra-marginals like Lancaster had Labour marginally ahead. The flipside is that they fell much further behind in Tory-held marginal territory like Stockton South.
I certainly don't think the likes of the West Bromwich seats are at risk but there's no shortage of Grimsbys, Darlingtons, Workingtons and Wrexhams for Labour to lose.
And even in conurbations there are plenty of Labour marginal - nine in London alone which will be lost on any swing over 3%.
You think there will be a 3% swing to the Tories in London ?
I think you are right that taxes will have to go up and I have no problem with increasing income tax across the board. What I find reduces the Lib Dem plan to a gimmick is their implication that a 1% rise would make any significant difference to the problems of funding health and social care.
A 1% increase in income tax would raise, I think, somewhere between £5bn and £6bn per annum across the entire UK. The budget from NHS England alone currently stands at £120bn p.a.. I do not know what the costs of social care are but I would suspect that it is at least another £10bn on top. Then add on the relevant costs for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In round figures we are probably looking at a total bill of something approaching £200bn p.a. plus or minus £20bn or so. The money raised by the extra 1% is not going to go very far. In fact once you take out the proportion that will inevitably be lost to the inefficiencies in the system, I doubt any health or social care provider will notice the difference.
How we provide and fund a 1st world health and social care system in the 21st century needs proper debate and a cross-party consensus. It does not need gimmicks dreamed up on the back of a fag packet in advance of an election.
Quite. In my experience politicians of all stripes think things such as:
- They can divide a given sum by the average salary of a nurse and then use that bung of cash to pay for those nurses, forgetting about the need to train them, fit them into the command structure, find them somewhere to work etc.
- They can quote the cost of building a hospital, forgetting that the real cost is running it long term.
- They can fund kit like scanners without needing to worry about maintenance or assessing real need.
As Sir Humphrey once said, you can spend as much as you want on the NHS, as there will always be more need. The trick is spending what money you have efficiently. I can see the attraction of reforming tax such that NI is hypothecated towards healthcare, we can then all agree a funding rate and manage around that.
The relevant point here for elections is that I think voters get this, at an intuitive level. Offering to just spend money on the NHS doesn't impress them that much anymore.
The other thing is that many voters instinctively are not impressed by "I will spend x Billions on y". The first question that raises is "What exactly will the money buy?". The boasts about spending money sound too much like the kind of fools who categorise their purchases, in social conversation, by how much they spend on them.
Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times reckons after a straw poll that the Conservatives will hoover up ex-UKIP votes in the south, where they don't need them, but only 20% of them in the north, where they do. Reckons Mrs May will end up no better than she is now.
I can see the piling up votes in safe seats thing being part of what is happening, which might argue against a massive landslide, but there seemsvtoo much going on in places they havevstruggled in the past for that to solely be it.
And has the polling to date not indicated the exact opposite, namely that the Tories are doing much better in Labour held seats than they are in their own?
And the actual results this week in Northumberland, Tees Valley, Cumbria and Derbyshire ie where the medium sized towns are.
Labour are likely to do better than average within the conurbations but we knew that already.
But most of Labour's remaining seats, as of 2015, ARE in conurbations.
The people on VoteUK doing the number-crunching have said there are actually very few Labour-held seats where the Tories beat Labour on Thursday. Even ultra-marginals like Lancaster had Labour marginally ahead. The flipside is that they fell much further behind in Tory-held marginal territory like Stockton South.
I certainly don't think the likes of the West Bromwich seats are at risk but there's no shortage of Grimsbys, Darlingtons, Workingtons and Wrexhams for Labour to lose.
And even in conurbations there are plenty of Labour marginal - nine in London alone which will be lost on any swing over 3%.
You think there will be a 3% swing to the Tories in London ?
The swing will be lower in London and I fancy Westminster N as a Labour hold but there will be at least half a dozen Conservative gains - Labour gains nothing from ramming up its majorities in Hackney and Islington.
How many of these do you think Labour will hold:
Brentford Ealing C Eltham Enfield N Hampstead Harrow Ilford N Tooting Westminster N
Ilford North will be the interesting one. West Streeting may get a significant personal vote - and his position on Corbyn is clear. All the others are definitely lost to Labour.
Talking of unlikely topplings, is there any reason to believe Momentum types are going to take it upon themselves to stand against anti-Corbynite Labour MPs, if nothing else in order to make the 15pct barrier a little more surmountable?
None. There was some speculation that this might happen if Corbyn were successfully deposed last year and the party then split, but there's no reason to suppose that this will happen now and no sign of it either.
Even accounting for the fact that the Far Left gets such a sympathetic hearing from most of the Labour rank-and-file, it would still have trouble explaining to them why it had stood candidates to split the Labour vote on purpose and allow the hated Tories to come through the middle and win.
Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times reckons after a straw poll that the Conservatives will hoover up ex-UKIP votes in the south, where they don't need them, but only 20% of them in the north, where they do. Reckons Mrs May will end up no better than she is now.
I can see the piling up votes in safe seats thing being part of what is happening, which might argue against a massive landslide, but there seemsvtoo much going on in places they havevstruggled in the past for that to solely be it.
And has the polling to date not indicated the exact opposite, namely that the Tories are doing much better in Labour held seats than they are in their own?
And the actual results this week in Northumberland, Tees Valley, Cumbria and Derbyshire ie where the medium sized towns are.
Labour are likely to do better than average within the conurbations but we knew that already.
But most of Labour's remaining seats, as of 2015, ARE in conurbations.
The people on VoteUK doing the number-crunching have said there are actually very few Labour-held seats where the Tories beat Labour on Thursday. Even ultra-marginals like Lancaster had Labour marginally ahead. The flipside is that they fell much further behind in Tory-held marginal territory like Stockton South.
I certainly don't think the likes of the West Bromwich seats are at risk but there's no shortage of Grimsbys, Darlingtons, Workingtons and Wrexhams for Labour to lose.
The LDs may be sub 10 seats, and they may not, but I hardly think it is the nailed on cert you think it is.
My working assumption for LD/Con battles is that the Conservative Party hoovers up 75% of the UKIP vote, and the LDs get the average of: one third of the way back between 2015 and 2010, and the 2010 votes plus the Remain percentage * the Labour vote. I.e., in Remain friendly seats, there is a bit of Lab->LD tactical voting.
This results in the LDs gaining Twickenham and Bath, Kingston is too close to call, and they lose Southport, Carshalton and Wallingham, and (probably) North Norfolk. If you want, we can add W&L to the list. Shall we say the LDs are -3 agains the Conservatives, which is them just picking up Twickenham? (I also have sneaking suspicion that they'll hold Richmond, simply because even as a Right Wing leaver I wouldn't be able to go vote for Zac, but that's personal.)
I would suggest that the Holyrood and Scottish locals make Edinburgh West the easiest 'gimme' for the LDs in the whole country. And you can probably add one of Dumbartonshire East and Fife NE to the list. So, that's Scotland +2 for the LDs.
This means you're at about 8 seats before gains/losses to Labour. The LDs will be greatly heartened by the Cambridge locals, where they did 9% better than in 2015, while the Labour party slipped back 4%. So, I'd be staggered if Huppert didn't regain that seat. Which takes us to 9.
And I'd be staggered if they didn't pick up another Labour seat somewhere in Remainia. So, while I'm happy to bet at odds of 5-1 or greater on the LDs being below 10, I think it's far from a sure thing.
My forecast has been, and remains, 12-14 seats on 12-14% of the national vote share.
I've Lab and Con neck and neck in Blyth Valley on Thursday. Actually I had Labour ahead by 1% but on vote2007 someone else had Con ahead by a couple of hundreds. So I guess I had a typo somewhere as I did the maths on Friday morning after a couple of hours of sleep.
In Wansbeck Labour led Con by just 5% on Thursday
in Durham NW Lab 35% Con 20%. But there are lots of Independents in local elections.
Doncaster seats all had comfortable Labour leads. Con and UKIP often didn't field full slates. So the highish UKIP % in the locals couldn't be transferred to Con as it's possibly already factored in if you use highest vote per party in each ward.
Gedling was probably neck and neck on Thursday. Con led by 1200 votes in the divisions making up the District but there are Gedling wards that are in Sherwood constituency (and the majority of them are in the Conservative divisions).
In Ashfield Labour did crap with Independents going very well. What will happen in a GE is anybody's guess.
I think Mansfield constituency has the same boundary of the District authority. If so using highest vote in multi members wards, it was Lab 37% Mansfield Independents 23% Con 20% UKIP 12% So it will all down on how the Independent vote will split in a GE. Con fielded only 1 candidate in 2 2 members divisions. So the UKIP 11% probably include some Con-UKIP ticket in those 2 divisions.
I've Lab and Con neck and beck in Newport West. I guess it means that Labour was ahead in Newport East but I didn't check.
LD topped the polls in Cardiff Central wards but they were -7% compared to 2012 with Labour unchanged.
I read Labour won all Cllrs in Cardiff South. So I guess they won't lose that one. Their vote in Swansea West seems to have held up too. They were outside chances for the Tories and not prime targets anyway.
Wrexham was atrocious for Labour. They are neck and neck with Plaid in the Rhondda. Labour leads PC by apron 6% in Neath. Comfortable lead also in Llanelli (where there is a big Indy vote in the locals).
Burnham won everything in Greater Manchester. So I guess it's pretty useless to look at particular constituency data. He even won Cheadle. It won't be replicated in a GE
The 9/4 on a Labour hold in Gedling looks like good value - the Labour vote was very solid at the local elections and the Conservatives have been in decline there for over two decades.
1. General elections and local elections are clean different things. If it were otherwise then Labour would still hold Stevenage and not be 5,000 votes adrift, for example. 2. The Tories need a swing of only just over 3% to take the seat, and the 2015 Ukip vote there was more than double the size of the Labour majority.
You *might* be correct, but if Labour does rescue Gedling it looks almost certainly as if it will be against a tide of other results. Personally, I think that the Tories are in pole position in every Labour seat in their target list down at least as far as Bishop Auckland, save perhaps for a couple of high Remain/low Ukip hold-outs in London, and possibly Hove.
But Stevenage was always a strong Labour town which is slowly trending Conservative at local level.
Gedling was a Conservative area which has been trending Labour - so much so that the Conservatives can't get a single councillor there this year, even though the UKIP vote collapsed.
If Gedling was renamed Nottingham North-East it would give a better indication of its demography.
Its going the same way as Nottingham East - once marginal now very safe Labour.
French turnout (which includes blank and spoiled votes) was at 28.2% by noon, down from 30.7% in 2012.
Do the polling stations give out blank ballots to those who want them?
2012 figures: positive votes: 75.7%; blank or spoiled: 4.7%.
Turnout (positive votes) could be well under 70% this time, maybe even under 65%.
The lower the turnout, the better for Le Pen as her core vote is most likely to turnout but I still expect Macron to win comfortably, though if it is a lower turnout it will likely be closer to a 60% to 40% result than a 65% to 35% result
The polls had very high levels of absentions embedded in them, so I'm note sure we can read too much into the lower turnout.
Buying wrap rounds in local papers is an indicator of local activist weakness. You pay because you haven't got the foot soldiers to deliver.
Not entirely. The local paper carries a weight of independence which party leaflets can't have.
This is an attempt to campaign in a different way. It has clearly blindsided the LDs up here. Perhaps their fury is worth something in itself. Clearly such spending is part of the national campaign and is an alternative to battle buses.
For me, it would have been better if it had been done a week earlier.
I am surprised the Westmorland Gazette did it though. It proves they are just part of a national conglomerate. And whilst I actually bought a copy for the first time in over a year I guess if it became a regular thing LD voters would cancel thier subscriptions.
Clearly you've never seem the LD 'Local Papers' we deliver. I was putting a batch of 'South Manchester News' through letterboxes recently. Front page story: Corbyn backs hard Brexit. Back page story: help the Lib Dem candidate fight it.
Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times reckons after a straw poll that the Conservatives will hoover up ex-UKIP votes in the south, where they don't need them, but only 20% of them in the north, where they do. Reckons Mrs May will end up no better than she is now.
I can see the piling up votes in safe seats thing being part of what is happening, which might argue against a massive landslide, but there seemsvtoo much going on in places they havevstruggled in the past for that to solely be it.
And has the polling to date not indicated the exact opposite, namely that the Tories are doing much better in Labour held seats than they are in their own?
And the actual results this week in Northumberland, Tees Valley, Cumbria and Derbyshire ie where the medium sized towns are.
Labour are likely to do better than average within the conurbations but we knew that already.
But most of Labour's remaining seats, as of 2015, ARE in conurbations.
The people on VoteUK doing the number-crunching have said there are actually very few Labour-held seats where the Tories beat Labour on Thursday. Even ultra-marginals like Lancaster had Labour marginally ahead. The flipside is that they fell much further behind in Tory-held marginal territory like Stockton South.
The keepers of PB's conscience seem to be proposing a compromise for a an honest and fair election: the Tories should not mention Corbyn and McDonnell's IRA past connections and Labour will not harp on about Theresa May's popularity.
For fun, look up the current jobs and friendships of the 71 people who managed to get into the Magennis' Bar toilets (about 4 foot sqare) on 30 January 2005.
O/T, political blogger and cancer sufferer Suzanne Cameron-Blackie, 68, also known as Anna Raccon, is standing as an independent against Corbyn in Islington.
Her main platform is calling for reforms of how the NHS deals with negligence claims, spending billions on lawyers and unnecessary compensation which should be going into patient care.
4 ) My original post 5 weeks ago was the LDs would have fewer than 10 MPs and W&L would not be one of them. I think the first part of my prediction is difficult to disagree with. I now know Farron will be allowed to pull resource into W&L no matter if it costs 3 or 4 seats elsewhere. Will it save him ?
[ cut for length ]
The situation in the locals in W&L was pretty much identical to elsewhere in the country: the LDs increased their vote total somewhat, while the Conservative Party hoovered up the vast majority of UKIP votes. It's hard to see - from votes in ballot boxes - anything other than a fairly comfortable hold for Mr Farron.
In terms of seats gained you are definitely right - and against Labour elsewhere in the county the Tories did not do well at all except for Copeland. On June 8 we will hold Penrith obviously and Carlisle. We will gain Barrow almost certainly and more surprisingly I think we will hold Copeland.
I have no doubt Farron will get every one of the true believers out on June 8. And certainly he will have much more resource than the Tories. Will it save him ?
Is the Tory Party nationally wasting resource in W&L ? Certainly not - only surplus resource is coming our way.
You are assuming the 47% who came out on May 4 map proportionally to the 75% who will come out on June 8 in spite of there being LD walkers on every housing estate in Sedbergh and Kirkby Lonsdale. Clearly that would be preposterous.
The challenge for us Tories is to get some of the others out on June 8. You don't think we will and even I have my doubts. But, we won in Copeland in much less fertile lands.
I thought the old mining towns would be quite good territory for Tory gains in this election, like Durham, Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire - however, they seem to be places where much of the UKIP vote has gone to Labour rather than the Tories.
Labour had a solid lead in Don Valley, too, for the people tipping Tissue Price to become an MP.
The Conservatives certainly did much better in the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire mining areas - the likes of Eastwood and Hucknall were gained on big swings.
And there was definitely a swing to the Conservatives in Don Valley from 2015.
French turnout (which includes blank and spoiled votes) was at 28.2% by noon, down from 30.7% in 2012.
Do the polling stations give out blank ballots to those who want them?
2012 figures: positive votes: 75.7%; blank or spoiled: 4.7%.
Turnout (positive votes) could be well under 70% this time, maybe even under 65%.
The lower the turnout, the better for Le Pen as her core vote is most likely to turnout but I still expect Macron to win comfortably, though if it is a lower turnout it will likely be closer to a 60% to 40% result than a 65% to 35% result
Midday turnout figures by area are here. The figure for Paris is 21.8%.
In terms of seats gained you are definitely right - and against Labour elsewhere in the county the Tories did not do well at all except for Copeland. On June 8 we will hold Penrith obviously and Carlisle. We will gain Barrow almost certainly and more surprisingly I think we will hold Copeland.
I have no doubt Farron will get every one of the true believers out on June 8. And certainly he will have much more resource than the Tories. Will it save him ?
Is the Tory Party nationally wasting resource in W&L ? Certainly not - only surplus resource is coming our way.
You are assuming the 47% who came out on May 4 map proportionally to the 75% who will come out on June 8 in spite of there being LD walkers on every housing estate in Sedbergh and Kirkby Lonsdale. Clearly that would be preposterous.
The challenge for us Tories is to get some of the others out on June 8. You don't think we will and even I have my doubts. But, we won in Copeland in much less fertile lands.
My point is that it's actually fairly easy to predict Conservative votes on June 9th: they will hoover up 75% of the UKIP vote. This is what the national polls are telling us, and it's what the locals told us last week. This means that there are a lot of vulnerable LD seats: Southport, Carshalton, and North Norfoilk being the obvious ones.
Even if we start from 8 LD seats and assume they lose W&L too, that takes them to 4. I think you'd be a brave man not to reckon the LDs will not take 2 SNP seats and Cambridge, which gets you to 7. So that's my working minimum for the LDs.
Leafy Remainia - Kingston, Twickenham and Richmond Park - all have small UKIP vote shares and a fair number of possible Con-LD switchers, what with the added push of people being angry about Heathrow. They could sweep all three. I think two is more likely.
Add in a couple of Remainia seats from Labour, and a shot at Bath and possibly Lewes and I think you get to 10-12 LD seats.
Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times reckons after a straw poll that the Conservatives will hoover up ex-UKIP votes in the south, where they don't need them, but only 20% of them in the north, where they do. Reckons Mrs May will end up no better than she is now.
I can see the piling up votes in safe seats thing being part of what is happening, which might argue against a massive landslide, but there seemsvtoo much going on in places they havevstruggled in the past for that to solely be it.
And has the polling to date not indicated the exact opposite, namely that the Tories are doing much better in Labour held seats than they are in their own?
And the actual results this week in Northumberland, Tees Valley, Cumbria and Derbyshire ie where the medium sized towns are.
Labour are likely to do better than average within the conurbations but we knew that already.
But most of Labour's remaining seats, as of 2015, ARE in conurbations.
The people on VoteUK doing the number-crunching have said there are actually very few Labour-held seats where the Tories beat Labour on Thursday. Even ultra-marginals like Lancaster had Labour marginally ahead. The flipside is that they fell much further behind in Tory-held marginal territory like Stockton South.
I certainly don't think the likes of the West Bromwich seats are at risk but there's no shortage of Grimsbys, Darlingtons, Workingtons and Wrexhams for Labour to lose.
And even in conurbations there are plenty of Labour marginal - nine in London alone which will be lost on any swing over 3%.
You think there will be a 3% swing to the Tories in London ?
The swing will be lower in London and I fancy Westminster N as a Labour hold but there will be at least half a dozen Conservative gains - Labour gains nothing from ramming up its majorities in Hackney and Islington.
How many of these do you think Labour will hold:
Brentford Ealing C Eltham Enfield N Hampstead Harrow Ilford N Tooting Westminster N
Ilford North will be the interesting one. West Streeting may get a significant personal vote - and his position on Corbyn is clear. All the others are definitely lost to Labour.
In London, having an anti-Corbyn view may not be an asset. I was out leafleting with another Labour member - retired person. Very pro-Corbyn. Right at the end of the round what did he do. He was an ex-partner in a very well known management consulting firm starting with an M.
Buying wrap rounds in local papers is an indicator of local activist weakness. You pay because you haven't got the foot soldiers to deliver.
Not entirely. The local paper carries a weight of independence which party leaflets can't have.
This is an attempt to campaign in a different way. It has clearly blindsided the LDs up here. Perhaps their fury is worth something in itself. Clearly such spending is part of the national campaign and is an alternative to battle buses.
For me, it would have been better if it had been done a week earlier.
I am surprised the Westmorland Gazette did it though. It proves they are just part of a national conglomerate. And whilst I actually bought a copy for the first time in over a year I guess if it became a regular thing LD voters would cancel thier subscriptions.
Clearly you've never seem the LD 'Local Papers' we deliver. I was putting a batch of 'South Manchester News' through letterboxes recently. Front page story: Corbyn backs hard Brexit. Back page story: help the Lib Dem candidate fight it.
I've asked this to a number of Lib Dems but haven't been able to get a straight answer, maybe you can help?
What is a "hard Brexit", and how does it differ from the United Kingdom Leaving the EU?
Buying wrap rounds in local papers is an indicator of local activist weakness. You pay because you haven't got the foot soldiers to deliver.
If you want to see an example of ground game vs air war vs tribal vote from the locals, Clay Cross North provides it:
Labour 1263 votes 39.6% Liberal Democrats 980 votes 30.8% Conservative 732 votes 22.9% UK Independence Party 211 6.6%
2013: Labour 1,737 73.4% Conservative 630 26.6%
These seats will not just fall into Conservative laps, they'll need to pound the pavements too. Westmorland would be a waste of resources with so many juicy Labour targets around.
Indeed. You get the feeling that the Tories are making the mistake of LAB in Yorkshire at GE2015. They flung resources into trying to unseat Clegg in Hallam and suffered elsewhere in battles with CON.
The Tory strategy in 2015 was rather successful I recall. Suggests they know what they're about.
Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times reckons after a straw poll that the Conservatives will hoover up ex-UKIP votes in the south, where they don't need them, but only 20% of them in the north, where they do. Reckons Mrs May will end up no better than she is now.
I can see the piling up votes in safe seats thing being part of what is happening, which might argue against a massive landslide, but there seemsvtoo much going on in places they havevstruggled in the past for that to solely be it.
And has the polling to date not indicated the exact opposite, namely that the Tories are doing much better in Labour held seats than they are in their own?
And the actual results this week in Northumberland, Tees Valley, Cumbria and Derbyshire ie where the medium sized towns are.
Labour are likely to do better than average within the conurbations but we knew that already.
But most of Labour's remaining seats, as of 2015, ARE in conurbations.
The people on VoteUK doing the number-crunching have said there are actually very few Labour-held seats where the Tories beat Labour on Thursday. Even ultra-marginals like Lancaster had Labour marginally ahead. The flipside is that they fell much further behind in Tory-held marginal territory like Stockton South.
I certainly don't think the likes of the West Bromwich seats are at risk but there's no shortage of Grimsbys, Darlingtons, Workingtons and Wrexhams for Labour to lose.
And even in conurbations there are plenty of Labour marginal - nine in London alone which will be lost on any swing over 3%.
You think there will be a 3% swing to the Tories in London ?
The swing will be lower in London and I fancy Westminster N as a Labour hold but there will be at least half a dozen Conservative gains - Labour gains nothing from ramming up its majorities in Hackney and Islington.
How many of these do you think Labour will hold:
Brentford Ealing C Eltham Enfield N Hampstead Harrow Ilford N Tooting Westminster N
Ilford North will be the interesting one. West Streeting may get a significant personal vote - and his position on Corbyn is clear. All the others are definitely lost to Labour.
i'd love to agree but I expect Labour will hold Westminster N, tooting, and possibly Eltham too.
Buying wrap rounds in local papers is an indicator of local activist weakness. You pay because you haven't got the foot soldiers to deliver.
Not entirely. The local paper carries a weight of independence which party leaflets can't have.
This is an attempt to campaign in a different way. It has clearly blindsided the LDs up here. Perhaps their fury is worth something in itself. Clearly such spending is part of the national campaign and is an alternative to battle buses.
For me, it would have been better if it had been done a week earlier.
I am surprised the Westmorland Gazette did it though. It proves they are just part of a national conglomerate. And whilst I actually bought a copy for the first time in over a year I guess if it became a regular thing LD voters would cancel thier subscriptions.
Clearly you've never seem the LD 'Local Papers' we deliver. I was putting a batch of 'South Manchester News' through letterboxes recently. Front page story: Corbyn backs hard Brexit. Back page story: help the Lib Dem candidate fight it.
I've asked this to a number of Lib Dems but haven't been able to get a straight answer, maybe you can help?
What is a "hard Brexit", and how does it differ from the United Kingdom Leaving the EU?
It means leaving the single market and customs union too in short
French turnout (which includes blank and spoiled votes) was at 28.2% by noon, down from 30.7% in 2012.
Do the polling stations give out blank ballots to those who want them?
2012 figures: positive votes: 75.7%; blank or spoiled: 4.7%.
Turnout (positive votes) could be well under 70% this time, maybe even under 65%.
The lower the turnout, the better for Le Pen as her core vote is most likely to turnout but I still expect Macron to win comfortably, though if it is a lower turnout it will likely be closer to a 60% to 40% result than a 65% to 35% result
Midday turnout figures by area are here. The figure for Paris is 21.8%.
Taster:
Turnout is highest in Provence, Le Pen's best area at 35%, so that may boost her a little while in Paris, Macron's best area, it is 21%
I thought the old mining towns would be quite good territory for Tory gains in this election, like Durham, Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire - however, they seem to be places where much of the UKIP vote has gone to Labour rather than the Tories.
Labour had a solid lead in Don Valley, too, for the people tipping Tissue Price to become an MP.
The Conservatives certainly did much better in the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire mining areas - the likes of Eastwood and Hucknall were gained on big swings.
And there was definitely a swing to the Conservatives in Don Valley from 2015.
Swadlincote (Derbys) - another former mining town - went Con on Thursday iirc.
French turnout (which includes blank and spoiled votes) was at 28.2% by noon, down from 30.7% in 2012.
Do the polling stations give out blank ballots to those who want them?
2012 figures: positive votes: 75.7%; blank or spoiled: 4.7%.
Turnout (positive votes) could be well under 70% this time, maybe even under 65%.
The lower the turnout, the better for Le Pen as her core vote is most likely to turnout but I still expect Macron to win comfortably, though if it is a lower turnout it will likely be closer to a 60% to 40% result than a 65% to 35% result
Midday turnout figures by area are here. The figure for Paris is 21.8%.
Taster:
Turnout is highest in Provence, Le Pen's best area at 35%, so that may boost her a little while in Paris, Macron's best area, it is 21%
Leafy Remainia - Kingston, Twickenham and Richmond Park - all have small UKIP vote shares and a fair number of possible Con-LD switchers, what with the added push of people being angry about Heathrow. They could sweep all three. I think two is more likely.
Add in a couple of Remainia seats from Labour, and a shot at Bath and possibly Lewes and I think you get to 10-12 LD seats.
I think we are approaching some agreement.
Where I would still disagree are those previously Non-Voters who turned out in their droves for Brexit in W&L last year.
I got some of them out last week but not enough.
Farron has royally pissed them off and they believe Brexit is more important than anything since 1945. I know many of them didn't give a **** whether I got back on the Yorkshire Dales and Cumbria. But they do care about Brexit. These people aren't UKIPers, they were non-voters. No doubt Farron hopes they stay that way.
I don't know about the other constituencies you list but I do know that the very small remain lead in W&L has already meant big problems for Farron.
The world has moved. Even three months ago we were wondering if there was any chance of taking W&L on the new boundaries in 2020 ...
Comments
Gedling is "only" target no.28 for the Conservatives, so it's not ultra, ultra marginal. Yes, if there's a very good ground game from Labour and a sufficient personal vote for the sitting MP (who is ex-shadow cabinet and has been incumbent for 20 years and is not, therefore, obscure) then they might pull it out of the bag. But the current situation favours the Tories.
- They can divide a given sum by the average salary of a nurse and then use that bung of cash to pay for those nurses, forgetting about the need to train them, fit them into the command structure, find them somewhere to work etc.
- They can quote the cost of building a hospital, forgetting that the real cost is running it long term.
- They can fund kit like scanners without needing to worry about maintenance or assessing real need.
As Sir Humphrey once said, you can spend as much as you want on the NHS, as there will always be more need. The trick is spending what money you have efficiently. I can see the attraction of reforming tax such that NI is hypothecated towards healthcare, we can then all agree a funding rate and manage around that.
The relevant point here for elections is that I think voters get this, at an intuitive level. Offering to just spend money on the NHS doesn't impress them that much anymore.
How many of these do you think Labour will hold:
Brentford
Ealing C
Eltham
Enfield N
Hampstead
Harrow
Ilford N
Tooting
Westminster N
Even accounting for the fact that the Far Left gets such a sympathetic hearing from most of the Labour rank-and-file, it would still have trouble explaining to them why it had stood candidates to split the Labour vote on purpose and allow the hated Tories to come through the middle and win.
The LDs may be sub 10 seats, and they may not, but I hardly think it is the nailed on cert you think it is.
My working assumption for LD/Con battles is that the Conservative Party hoovers up 75% of the UKIP vote, and the LDs get the average of: one third of the way back between 2015 and 2010, and the 2010 votes plus the Remain percentage * the Labour vote. I.e., in Remain friendly seats, there is a bit of Lab->LD tactical voting.
This results in the LDs gaining Twickenham and Bath, Kingston is too close to call, and they lose Southport, Carshalton and Wallingham, and (probably) North Norfolk. If you want, we can add W&L to the list. Shall we say the LDs are -3 agains the Conservatives, which is them just picking up Twickenham? (I also have sneaking suspicion that they'll hold Richmond, simply because even as a Right Wing leaver I wouldn't be able to go vote for Zac, but that's personal.)
I would suggest that the Holyrood and Scottish locals make Edinburgh West the easiest 'gimme' for the LDs in the whole country. And you can probably add one of Dumbartonshire East and Fife NE to the list. So, that's Scotland +2 for the LDs.
This means you're at about 8 seats before gains/losses to Labour. The LDs will be greatly heartened by the Cambridge locals, where they did 9% better than in 2015, while the Labour party slipped back 4%. So, I'd be staggered if Huppert didn't regain that seat. Which takes us to 9.
And I'd be staggered if they didn't pick up another Labour seat somewhere in Remainia. So, while I'm happy to bet at odds of 5-1 or greater on the LDs being below 10, I think it's far from a sure thing.
My forecast has been, and remains, 12-14 seats on 12-14% of the national vote share.
In Wansbeck Labour led Con by just 5% on Thursday
in Durham NW Lab 35% Con 20%. But there are lots of Independents in local elections.
Doncaster seats all had comfortable Labour leads. Con and UKIP often didn't field full slates. So the highish UKIP % in the locals couldn't be transferred to Con as it's possibly already factored in if you use highest vote per party in each ward.
Gedling was probably neck and neck on Thursday. Con led by 1200 votes in the divisions making up the District but there are Gedling wards that are in Sherwood constituency (and the majority of them are in the Conservative divisions).
In Ashfield Labour did crap with Independents going very well. What will happen in a GE is anybody's guess.
I think Mansfield constituency has the same boundary of the District authority. If so using highest vote in multi members wards, it was
Lab 37% Mansfield Independents 23% Con 20% UKIP 12%
So it will all down on how the Independent vote will split in a GE. Con fielded only 1 candidate in 2 2 members divisions. So the UKIP 11% probably include some Con-UKIP ticket in those 2 divisions.
I've Lab and Con neck and beck in Newport West. I guess it means that Labour was ahead in Newport East but I didn't check.
LD topped the polls in Cardiff Central wards but they were -7% compared to 2012 with Labour unchanged.
I read Labour won all Cllrs in Cardiff South. So I guess they won't lose that one. Their vote in Swansea West seems to have held up too. They were outside chances for the Tories and not prime targets anyway.
Wrexham was atrocious for Labour. They are neck and neck with Plaid in the Rhondda. Labour leads PC by apron 6% in Neath. Comfortable lead also in Llanelli (where there is a big Indy vote in the locals).
Burnham won everything in Greater Manchester. So I guess it's pretty useless to look at particular constituency data. He even won Cheadle. It won't be replicated in a GE
Gedling was a Conservative area which has been trending Labour - so much so that the Conservatives can't get a single councillor there this year, even though the UKIP vote collapsed.
If Gedling was renamed Nottingham North-East it would give a better indication of its demography.
Its going the same way as Nottingham East - once marginal now very safe Labour.
NEW THREAD
Her main platform is calling for reforms of how the NHS deals with negligence claims, spending billions on lawyers and unnecessary compensation which should be going into patient care.
An inspiring story of someone who has fought injustice for decades, sadly she doesn't have too long left.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4480714/Cancer-sufferer-standing-against-Jeremy-Corbyn.html
Peston
How much will the increase in tax on £80,000 earners raise
Thornberry
I don't know
Peston
Fantastic
And there was definitely a swing to the Conservatives in Don Valley from 2015.
Taster:
Even if we start from 8 LD seats and assume they lose W&L too, that takes them to 4. I think you'd be a brave man not to reckon the LDs will not take 2 SNP seats and Cambridge, which gets you to 7. So that's my working minimum for the LDs.
Leafy Remainia - Kingston, Twickenham and Richmond Park - all have small UKIP vote shares and a fair number of possible Con-LD switchers, what with the added push of people being angry about Heathrow. They could sweep all three. I think two is more likely.
Add in a couple of Remainia seats from Labour, and a shot at Bath and possibly Lewes and I think you get to 10-12 LD seats.
What is a "hard Brexit", and how does it differ from the United Kingdom Leaving the EU?
Where I would still disagree are those previously Non-Voters who turned out in their droves for Brexit in W&L last year.
I got some of them out last week but not enough.
Farron has royally pissed them off and they believe Brexit is more important than anything since 1945. I know many of them didn't give a **** whether I got back on the Yorkshire Dales and Cumbria. But they do care about Brexit. These people aren't UKIPers, they were non-voters. No doubt Farron hopes they stay that way.
I don't know about the other constituencies you list but I do know that the very small remain lead in W&L has already meant big problems for Farron.
The world has moved. Even three months ago we were wondering if there was any chance of taking W&L on the new boundaries in 2020 ...