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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » History suggests the Tories will see their share of the vote decline in 2015
In recent weeks there’s been a positivity about the Tories’ chances of winning outright in 2015, Michael Gove was reported to be convinced of that, and over at Betfair, the implied probability of a Tory majority has been increasing in recent weeks (though there has been an easing back from the recent high point)
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It should not be hard for those backing a Tory majority to name the 20 seats the Tories are going to gain.
A few patterns that I find interesting from the table.
In 1979, the Opposition vote increased by much more than the Government vote decreased - so the anti-Government vote coalesced around the Opposition.
In 2010 (and to a lesser extent 1997) the change of Government occurred principally due to a fall in the Government vote, and the anti-Government vote is fractured.
The challenge for the Conservatives is to somehow marshal an anti-Labour vote, but if anything it is the anti-Conservative vote that is becoming more concentrated.
I'm seriously thinking of paying £25 and joining them after the diet of threads about how they're doomed on here.
And I've never joined a party ever - I once gave £10 to the Libertarian Party 5yrs ago.
More to the point is that in my adult life we have had 2 changes of government (I was just too young to vote in 1979). 2 changes in 36 years. Are we really due another one already?
"Eccentric Conservative councillors are a vital source of silly season copy for any hack, evidently something not lost on BBC Sunday Politics team this week. Worth noting that they are spending licence fee payers’ cash on a ComRes poll of Tory councillors which even the staunchest Beeb defender would concede are designed to embarrass the party. The questions include:
- asking if they think “climate change is not happening”
- whether “Immigration has had a negative impact on Britain”
- whether “legalising gay marriage will cost my party more votes than it gains at the next Election”
- whether they support a ban on the burkha
- whether Cameron and Osborne are “arrogant”
- whether they support an electoral pact with UKIP
Of course those taking part in the poll have every opportunity to answer otherwise, nonetheless it is certainly an interesting choice of question topics from the BBC. No doubt they will also be asking Labour councillors specifically-designed awkward questions in the name of impartiality… http://order-order.com/2013/08/22/beeb-tries-to-trip-up-tory-councillors/
I tend to think the latter although I agree it's complicated by the presence of a coalition.
Next election could be a weird one.
Miss Plato, I quite agree. Maybe we'll see one asking Lib Dems or Labour members if stopping climate change justifies increasing energy bills by £300 per annum, whether fuel duty should increase to promote the use of public transport, whether we should harmonise taxes with the EU, whether Trident should be scrapped, etc etc.
Who knows whether the particular aspect of recent history highlighted by TSE will repeat itself? The dynamics are different this time. All the same, a majority looks a big ask, given the disgraceful conspiracy by the LibDems and Labour to torpedo the completely uncontroversial measure to correct the fact that voters in Labour strongholds get a disproportionately large number of seats per voter.
Play about to start at The Oval.
Betfair odds:
England: 7.5
Australia: 2.7
Draw: 1.7
http://www.betfair.com/sport#u=/sport/cricket/event?eventId=27027049
If Miliband matched the best of those - Blair's 8.8% in 1997 - he'd only get Labour up to 38.5%.
Worth noting that for most of the decreases for the last 2 governments have been during a time when the opposition has been effectively unelectable.
The Tories between 79 and 97, and Labour between 97 and 2010 saw falls in their vote share but were still safe due to the useless nature of the opposition at the time.
Plus we're dealing with a stable coalition now, so the Tories could still remain stable or even increase their vote share with the Lib Dems taking the pain.
Oh and UKIP could hurt the blues too...
That said, overall i'm inclined to agree that the Tories are likely to see a drop in their share of the vote.
Do you think Ed Miliband is doing a good job as Labour party leader ?
Do you support a referendum on EU membership ?
Are you affiliated to Unite ?
Do you think the last Labour government got its immigration policy wrong ?
Did you support Ed Balls' " light touch " towards the banking regulation ?
I wonder what their definition of prosecution is? Would a fixed penalty be a prosecution? Fixed penalties were much more limited when I was prosecuting than they are today.
Any which way it is indisputable that this is ridiculous and needs changed.
The boundary changes would only have [partially, because based on old data] corrected for the tendency for Labour's inner-city seats to have fewer registered electors.
You know full well that the differential turnout means that Labour pile up fewer votes in safe seats, and that anti-Conservative tactical voting also reduces the number of Labour votes where they are third, thus appearing to give Labour more seats than their national vote total deserves, but simply because Labour voters modify their behaviour in reaction to their knowledge about the way in which FPTP operates.
If Conservative activists were not so keen on bussing their older supporters to the polls in their safe shire seats, but concentrated more of their effort on marginal constituencies, that would probably do more to "correct" for this anomaly than Cameron's shameful attempt to erect a trans-Tamar Parliamentary constituency. When the sun is shining it almost looks like the Amazon in places you know!
Feel really sorry for the new guys. How much more evidence do the ECB need that county cricket is a bankrupt anachronism that doesn't prepare players for the top level?
It's almost like they've got to learn a new sport.
Like the NHS, the BBC is one of those institutions that you would be a fool to mess with.
I said it of the Tories and the NHS, they should have left well alone. Their entire detox strategy ruined by messing with it.
The BBC may well need a kick/modernisation/reorg/whatever, but not enough people demand it versus the number of people who see it as another institution that makes us British...
And the blues won't. They should, though.
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/bbctrusteeelectionandlicencefee.html
If prosecution for non-payment of the BBC licence fee is that common, it should be a vote winer for UKIP. 'Better off with UKIP'.
Labours lead with YouGov was just 3% this morning LOL but its still all terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrible for the Tories here. Has Prof. King taken over and we haven't been told?
"Will there ever again be good news for the Tories?"
Ever day is a good news day for the Tories whilst Ed remains in post !!
I could see it being useful in that labour and and libs would have to defend the status quo. Gargantuan salaries....huge payoffs.....Saville et all....hounding licence fee non-payers.....bias....
The average size of Labour constituencies is 68,487 whereas the average size of Conservative constituencies is 72,418. This is partly due to fact that Labour performed much stronger than the Conservatives in Wales and Scotland where constituencies tend to be smaller than in England. (The average size of constituencies in Wales is 56,628 and in Scotland 65,475, whereas the average size in England is 71,858.) But even within England, the average size of Labour constituencies is 70,252 as compared to the average size of Conservative constituencies of 72,816.
It is a straightforward, incontrovertible fact that constituency sizes are biased towards Labour. The over-representation of Wales is just staggering - and that's even without considering the West Lothian aspect of the issue.
Nothing to do with better distribution of votes, nothing to do with differential turnout (those factors work IN ADDITION to the electoral bias, and of course no-one is complaining about them).
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/18125
Feel free to include me as an official member of PB Tories - you only have yourselves to blame :^ )
I've always wondered why there's ever been a need for legislation on this. Surely the electoral commission should be sorting it out. Isn't that what it is there for?
http://www.saga.co.uk/newsroom/press-releases/2013/august/over-50s-demand-a-referendum-on-uks-relationship-with-the-eu.aspx
(only kidding!!!!)
For the price of two pizzas - it seemed like a good deal to keep Labour out.
Will you come to the excellent Conservative Policy Forum meetings we have (in very pleasant pubs in Mayfield and Wadhurst)? I can recommend them - details from Jeanette at the constituency office:
http://www.wealdenconservatives.com/
Of course the other big point of interest will be choosing the new candidate (and presumably MP) for the next election. I'm not sure what the cut-off date for new members will be, as the process hasn't formally started yet.
PR^2 at least keeps everyone as a member of a small 1,2,3 seat constituency. A return in some ways to the system that operated for 600 years prior to 1885...
This is very far from being a disgrace.
From 2011 to 2017 the BBC is cutting spending by 16% in real terms. But guess what - there has been almost no impact on any BBC services at all. Yes, they lost 50% of F1 but they've just added the FA Cup again from next year.
They are basically absorbing the whole 16% real terms cut without any discernable scaling back of any BBC operations. Of course that just demonstrates how massive the waste was.
Plus the Licence Fee deal done in late 2010 was before further cuts announced much more recently - eg to Government departments for 2015/16.
So if Cameron wins he must go for at least another 5 year Licence Fee freeze in nominal terms (ie 2017 to 2022). If he's feeling brave maybe go for a 1% nominal cut per year for those 5 years.
If he does this the BBC should, at long last, be forced to start making at least some cuts to its operations.
Why stop there? If you made Surrey, Hampshire and Sussex into one big seat, you could guarantee Labour hegemony for ever.
The over-representation of Wales isnt a pro-Labour conspiracy. It's a long established feature of the system (so long established it predates the birth of Labour) and is seen in other countries too (eg the US Senate also gives smaller constituent states more representation than their population strictly deserves).
I can see why people would argue against it (and I would tend to agree with them I think) but it's not some sort of disgraceful outrage invented by the last Labour government to gerrymander the system in its own favour.
Does the US Senate also allow senators in the smaller states to vote on matters that do not affect their own constituents?
However, the fact still remains that they torpedoed the measure to correct it. That is the outrage.
Of course it's not just Wales - it's also the North East and, to an extent, Scotland. All, coincidentally (I'm not being cynical, I think it is coincidental!) Labour strongholds. No-one would much mind if the variations all cancelled out overall, but they don't.
There is a separate argument over whether the system should allow for this or whether we should say that people who don't get around to registering at once when they move deserve to be disenfranchised. But that doesn't justify your pronouncement that bias is a straightforward, incontrovertible fact. The system is something else: a traditionally British muddled compromise, somewhere between voting by population and voting by electorate..
That said, you might be right about Wales - I've not looked at that. It depends what you mean by "many" - it's true in the sense of "many people vote UKIP", but the BBC remains Britain's most trusted news source by a large margin:
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/howwework/reports/pdf/bbc_report_trust_and_impartiality_report_may_2013.pdf&sa=U&ei=2icWUvaTE86AhAfj6oGoCA&ved=0CBQQFjAF&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNECtZ8KWzvx0ZAeguxxiIlhqIN9ug
Wanting over-representation and a say in matters that do not affect your voters - that's too much surely.
Quite so, as many of us have been saying for a long time.
So the question is, how much will Labour's share increase? If we generously put the Tory ceiling at 36%, a Labour share of 33% or so should put Ed Miliband in No 10.
Tory-Labour more or less level pegging, and Labour have a majority.
Though a lot at the margins depends on the behaviour of anti-Tory tacticals, the performance of the Lib Dems, and the UKIP / Tory dynamic, it still puts the "Miliband will not be PM" guff you read on here into perspective.
Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday morning 7am (don't be late, they don't like it when people are late) for the first round of 4,500 leaflets.
Then when you've done those (shouldn't take longer than a few hours) you can meet at 7pm Saturday eve at the Coach & Horses for some envelopes. Only 3,450 of those so should be done in a jiffy.
We'll let you know next week's schedule but the watchword is busy, busy, busy.... there's not a moment to lose....
Also, there should be more MPs. As population increases and issues become more complex, people should have more democratic representation rather than gradually getting less.
Hopefully Ed Miliband will address some of these kind of issues if / when he becomes PM.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/page/guidance-polls-surveys-summary/
"Commissioning an opinion poll on politics or any matter of public policy involves a mandatory referral - in advance - to the Chief Adviser, Politics, for consultation and approval.
In most cases, there should also be consultation with the Head of Political Research for advice on appropriate companies, phrasing of questions, sample size and other technical issues. Consultation with either is also advisable when commissioning any opinion polls - especially on controversial issues.
Programme-makers should ask themselves searching questions before proposing the commissioning of an opinion poll. These might include:
•Are the results likely to tell me something new, or are they geared towards reinforcing something I think I already know?
•If the results are unexpected, or indicate views which run contrary to other evidence gathered for my programme - what would I do? Adjust my narrative? Express scepticism in my own research? Decide it is a "rogue" and ignore it? (Not recommended);
•How useful is a one-off snap-shot poll on this subject? Is there a way of demonstrating a trend, a movement in opinion? Or, are there other ways of achieving the same editorial objective?
•What about the timing of the fieldwork? Are there other factors at work, other stories in the news, which may have a short-term impact on the results?
•How appropriate is the subject matter for a BBC-commissioned opinion poll? Are respondents likely to have sufficient knowledge/interest for the results to be meaningful? How will the mere fact of asking these questions reflect on the BBC as a whole?"
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BSDxxf0IEAE8hCy.jpg:large
Wasnt the proposal for Wales to lose 10 seats? No matter I think the point is largely the same (and the same as mine) anyway.
Osborne is hiding his desire to shut down HS2 very well these days!!!
Tweets MPs Delete @deletedbyMPs
DT @MichaelMcCannMP: @Goldie11Michael - Daly is a low-life toad, and your sarcasm is well placed. pltw.ps/1d5td5x
In fact, there's a pretty good record of governments doing well at their first attempt at re-election:
1950: Labour lose many seats but hold on to power, though not for all that long
1955: The Conservatives increase their seats and majority
1966: Labour increases their majority substantially, as well as vote share
1974F: The Conservatives lose power, though only just and retain a plurality of the vote
1974O: Labour increases its seats total, turning a minority government into one with (for a short time) a slender majority.
1983: The Conservatives win a landslide in an election with a lot of churn but where the net effect is Lab to Alliance
2001: Labour wins a second landslide, albeit fractionally smaller than their first.
To the extent that there is a golden rule, it's this: once the party in government's majority falls from one election result to the next, it won't increase again. In other words, the majority can go up in office (as on several occasions), but once it's peaked, it's downhill from there until opposition.
One other point to note: one factor for the declining shares of governments has been the growth of Others (including the Liberals / Alliance / Lib Dems). As such, to a small extent, it hasn't mattered if the absolute share has fallen a little from election to election as the bar needed to be reached to form a government has fallen by well over 10% since 1950.
/devil's advocate
News is coming through that the Conservatives are in negotiation to retain the services of Anastasia Fedorenchik for the 2015 General Election campaign.
The decision to approach the Russian follows a pattern of recruiting high profile election campaigners from outside the country, such as Lynton Crosby from Australia and Jim Messina, Obama's 2012 campaign winner from the United States.
Fedorenchik is currently press-secretary to "Nashi" the pro-Putin youth movement in Russia. Her expertise is in using visual media to project party leaders to female voters.
On Putin's last birthday (October 7th, 2012), she published a widely praised photo-tribute to Russia's President under the title "21 Reasons why Russian Girls Love Vladimir Putin".
Conservative Party strategists have been concerned about David Cameron's poor polling among the female voters and believe that Fedorenchik's more robust approach would help turn the tide.
Cosy date-night photos of Dave and Sam on holiday are expected to be replaced by Putin type macho action shoots. "Women like their leaders to be emotionally strong, to be defenders and providers", Anastasia said, "It is not a question of creating a fantasy but of using photography to reveal a leader's true character."
Fedorenchik pointed to an example of how this has been done in Russia: http://bit.ly/18MkVK9
The full 2012 birthday tribute to Putin can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/VGV9CH
Beyond that obvious maths (well unless your name is Nick Clegg and you have a flounce) there is the inherent awkwardness of the good old West Lothian question, and it ain't going away any time soon. As is well known Scottish Westminster MP's are voting on matters that they don't have responsibility for back home and so to an extent are the Welsh (and even in Wales there are big chunks of real influence devolved - like the health service). Now N Ireland was a similar anomaly from 1922 - the 70's and had reduced MP's compared to its population as a result (12 v 19?), and in my view the system could stand a small quirk like that especially as effectively they were holding a mini election without UK parties involved (largely). The problem is unsustainable though when you throw in Wales and Scotland too and over 115 seats or 18% becomes an "anomaly". Ultimately you can properly federalise a la USA/Australia but of course that leaves England as a colossus of 85% of the whole by population (and growing as a proportion) and the "UK PM" not much more than Foreign Secretary. From a Labour perspective too England is a much tougher vote to win than the UK - even Howard won the popular vote in England in 2005 (I think).
It's as if Blair simply thought "we'll chuck the Scots a Devo bone as a sop for having put up with Maggie, that'll shut 'em up, let's move on" and sadly it all remains unresolved and festering slowly to flair up periodically.
I believe that the general use of natural boundaries in determining UK constituencies has done a lot to save us from gerrymandering, and throwing it out in order to make a net difference of a handful of seats seemed to me too much harm for too little good.
Now, I am in favour of relatively large multi-member STV seats. This would do a lot more to give each voter's vote an equal weight, as it would vastly reduce the number of no-hope/no-effort areas for each party.