politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » We mustn’t let the focus on Scotland and London over-shadow

But Fox, more importantly- no Tories now in Oxford, Cambridge and Norwich. Three of our great, most beautiful and cultured towns, cleansed of Tories.....yippeeee

foxinsoxuk said:

MarkSenior said:

nunu said:

MarkSenior said:

MarkSenior said:

Bristol 5 more 2 member wards declared now Lab 10 Con 8 LD 4 Green 3

1 more to Labour now Lab 12

Talking to yourself I see..........

4 more to Lab Lab 16 now

Not many UKIPers in WWC Bristol?

john_zims said:

'The Lib Dems are delighted with the progress. Their 370 seats is six times that achieved by UKIP and not far from half the Tory total.'
The Lib Dems gained 44 seats out of the 280 they lost in 2012.Down to one assembly member in London & overtaken by UKIP,almost wiped out in Wales with 0ne assembly member and again overtaken by UKIP and stood still in Scotland.
How low do you want to set the bar ?

If you are a Lib Dem, any sign of growth is a joy to behold.
It is having hope that will eventually kill them.

tyson said:

Excellent- I've just checked the election results and Cambridge becomes another viable place for me to come and return to live in- a NTT, a No Tory Town....a pleasant place where I know my neighbours are decent people.

Alongside, Oxford and Norwich I can spend the days wandering the streets, smiling serenely, knowing there isn't a Tory in sight, and if there are, they are such shameful, wretched creatures that they keep their miserable views to themselves. Places where the Newsagents stock only Guardians. Bliss.

Someone who loves their country so much they live overseas in a place that the left regards as unsafe for foreign children. Ironic?

On other news, now that the GOP race is over I'm going over the GE polls a bit, what I discovered is Trump looks a bit UKIPy, his support is almost evenly widespread, here are the latest state polls:

Safe GOP states.
Idaho 48
Indiana 48
Georgia 42
Utah 38
Arizona 37

Safe DEM.
Connecticut 40
New York 36
Minnesota 35
California 34

Swing states.
North Carolina 44
Ohio 42
Florida 41
Wisconsin 34

So if he is at 40-42 nationally then it's probably not very different between states, which presents an opportunity for Hillary for a 50 state wipeout or the danger that Trump might win the election even if he loses the popular vote by a margin.

Trump does really badly in safe Republican states and quite well in safe Democratic states and about normal in most swing states, which is obviously a reflection of him losing past republican voters and gaining past democratic voters, but it doesn't change the picture much in the Electoral College.

Trump can afford to lose 10 points in states where Romney won by 60+% in 2012 as long as he keeps Republicans in swing states on his side plus his democrat switchers and he can win even if he loses the popular vote to Hillary, I estimate that the cutoff point is losing to Hillary by 4-5 points nationally and Trump would still be elected President.

tyson said:

Excellent- I've just checked the election results and Cambridge becomes another viable place for me to come and return to live in- a NTT, a No Tory Town....a pleasant place where I know my neighbours are decent people.

Alongside, Oxford and Norwich I can spend the days wandering the streets, smiling serenely, knowing there isn't a Tory in sight, and if there are, they are such shameful, wretched creatures that they keep their miserable views to themselves. Places where the Newsagents stock only Guardians. Bliss.

I like places with political diversity, it keeps you more grounded and being less out of touch with the average person.

john_zims said:

'The Lib Dems are delighted with the progress. Their 370 seats is six times that achieved by UKIP and not far from half the Tory total.'


The Lib Dems gained 44 seats out of the 280 they lost in 2012.Down to one assembly member in London & overtaken by UKIP,almost wiped out in Wales with 0ne assembly member and again overtaken by UKIP and stood still in Scotland.

How low do you want to set the bar ?

LDems were not overtaken by UKIP in Scotland

Scrapheap_as_was said:

SouthamObserver said:

The Tottenham choke continues. If Arsenal avoid defeat today I am 90 minutes from winning a very tidy sum.

all too true - unless Man C win today, we're finishing 3rd.

But I win a ton of money, so that's some consolation :-)

It was clear as soon as we didn't beat WBA that we'd finish below Arsenal.

MarkSenior said:

Brislington East split Lab/Con
Brislington West split Lab/LDem

I make it Lab 18 Con 9 LDem 5 Green 3

Bristol website getting a bit confused but I think it is 2 more wards to Lab and 1 to Con
so Lab 22 Con 11 LDem 5 Green 3
and 1 more ward 2 LDems 1 Lab now LDems 7 Lab 23
things looking bleak for Bristol Greens

Scotland aside, Labour need a 13% swing in England to win a majority. That's bigger than what Tony Blair achieved in 1997. Chance of that happening = zero. The Tories could exhume Jimmy Savile, stick him in a wheelbarrow, plonk a blue rosette on him, and push him around every constituency in Britain and they would STILL beat Labour in 2020.

Mr. Felix, in Scotland are the Lib Dems behind the Greens?

felix said:

Sean_F said:

MTimT said:

LOL After the pollsters got the 2015 GE so wrong, why is Mike now saying that, instead of the pollsters getting the 2016 Locals wrong, CON and UKIP underperformed? Is it not just possible that the pollsters are still getting it wrong but in a different



direction now?

Either way, not good news for Cameron.

You can only compare questions about voting intentions in a general election with outcomes in a general election. Governments almost always underperform their poll ratings in local elections.

Except in Scotland where moderate centre right Tories outperformed the polls and astonishingly Slab - not to mention UKIP and the LDs.

I think the situation in Scotland is a little more unique than that.

tight match in the hurling

clare 0-12 waterford 2-09

Good afternoon and a very sincere 'welcome back' to Defined Discussion Subjects on Vanilla.

Many thanks to whoever engineered it.

AnneJGP said:

Good afternoon and a very sincere 'welcome back' to Defined Discussion Subjects on Vanilla.

Many thanks to whoever engineered it.

Bristol results page confusing itself and now crashed I think
Corrected figures for Bristol as it stands now
Lab 24 Con 10 LDem 7 Green 3

Bristol Council managing to foul up the results - 2 safe Tory seats lost to Labour...but they mixed up the results on their Twitter feed.

The Tory candidate for Mayor Charles Lucas failed to retain his seat in Clifton.

felix said:

Sean_F said:

32% is a mediocre score, but to finish 1% behind the Opposition is similar to the Conservatives' performances from 1980-88, and better than Labour's performances from 2000-04. A change of government is usually preferred by leads of 10%+.

It's worth noting too that Labour's vote share in Scotland, Wales, and the London Assembly was down on 2015.

Sssshhhhh. Given the state of the Tory party at the moment we need to keep Labour chipper about Corbyn - which when push comes to shove is the most important issue here.

LOL - there is something in that!!

I suspect the danger time for Corbyn will not come un till so many of the new members of the Lab get board and leave, or do not bother renewing there membership. So if most joined in May - September 15, and there membership in one year, (+ 3 mouths grace time I think) we are not talking about Dec 16 at the earliest. The time for the anti-Corbyn to strike may be May 17, in the shadow of those LG elections, for one thing it will include the Scottish LG elections which could be painful.

Perhaps the Conservative party could arrange for some internal party warfare after the budget in April 17 to take the presser of Corbyn then?

rcs1000 said:

Fun fact: UK power demand has fallen off the low-end of the chart at grid watch - probably thanks to increased solar

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

fine for sunny days like this people are probably out enjoyingg the sunshine whilst it lasts in the south east where the demand is.

MikeK said:

Although no longer a member of UKIP, a little sparrow has whispered into my little ear, that some reorganization in the upper echelons is more than pending and indeed is due to start in a matter days if not hours.

Farage being sacked?

Mr. 565, who would sack Farage? [I mean that in a literal, not philosophical, sense].

Mr. K, any more juicy details?

MikeK said:

Although no longer a member of UKIP, a little sparrow has whispered into my little ear, that some reorganization in the upper echelons is more than pending and indeed is due to start in a matter days if not hours.

Ein Nacht der langen Messer again?

Clare win the hurling final

Waterford threw their lead away.

felix said:

Sean_F said:

MTimT said:

LOL After the pollsters got the 2015 GE so wrong, why is Mike now saying that, instead of the pollsters getting the 2016 Locals wrong, CON and UKIP underperformed? Is it not just possible that the pollsters are still getting it wrong but in a different



direction now?

Either way, not good news for Cameron.

You can only compare questions about voting intentions in a general election with outcomes in a general election. Governments almost always underperform their poll ratings in local elections.

Except in Scotland where moderate centre right Tories outperformed the polls and astonishingly Slab - not to mention UKIP and the LDs.

But that was wasn't a 'local' election it was an election for a Scottish government.

The Scottish local elections are next year.

Scrapheap_as_was said:

SouthamObserver said:

The Tottenham choke continues. If Arsenal avoid defeat today I am 90 minutes from winning a very tidy sum.

all too true - unless Man C win today, we're finishing 3rd.

3rd is pretty good for a small club like Tottenham.

runnymede said:

TCPoliticalBetting said:

Plato_Says said:

TCPoliticalBetting said:

peter_from_putney said:

Hugely disappointing for the Tories, but hardly surprising following the internal strife over the EU, not to mention Osborne's inept performance as regards the budget.
The blue team's worst performance over the past 6 years by far.
Although Zac was a poor choice as theTories' nominee for London Mayor, I doubt whether anyone else could have won against this backdrop.

Agreed. There are several hundred conservative council candidates who lost out at this election purely because of Cameron and Osborne's decisions this year. Why did they call the referendum so early and not delay to Sept? It could have made these elections have better results for the Conservatives.

Migration crisis repeated

Councillors sacrificed for the EU.

They'd happily sacrifice their whole party.

They'd happily sacrifice their whole country.

@tyson

' Places where the Newsagents stock only Guardians. Bliss.'


You'll have to hurry up with circulation of 160,000 and plummeting you don't have much time.

Surely Islington would be a better option and must account for at least half the circulation.

Casino_Royale said:

tyson said:

Excellent- I've just checked the election results and Cambridge becomes another viable place for me to come and return to live in- a NTT, a No Tory Town....a pleasant place where I know my neighbours are decent people.

Alongside, Oxford and Norwich I can spend the days wandering the streets, smiling serenely, knowing there isn't a Tory in sight, and if there are, they are such shameful, wretched creatures that they keep their miserable views to themselves. Places where the Newsagents stock only Guardians. Bliss.

Nah. I'm going to find out where you live, stick a Telegraph through your letterbox, and canvass you.

Worst sexual innuendo ever.

tyson said:

Places where the Newsagents stock only Guardians. Bliss.

The Guardian is a niche publication.

Soon it will only be available under the counter from specialist suppliers

Casino_Royale said:

tyson said:

Excellent- I've just checked the election results and Cambridge becomes another viable place for me to come and return to live in- a NTT, a No Tory Town....a pleasant place where I know my neighbours are decent people.

Alongside, Oxford and Norwich I can spend the days wandering the streets, smiling serenely, knowing there isn't a Tory in sight, and if there are, they are such shameful, wretched creatures that they keep their miserable views to themselves. Places where the Newsagents stock only Guardians. Bliss.

Nah. I'm going to find out where you live, stick a Telegraph through your letterbox, and canvass you.

Go the whole hog and make it the Daily Express ;-)

justin124 said:

Jason said:

justin124 said:

Jason said:

Scotland aside, Labour need a 13% swing in England to win a majority. That's bigger than what Tony Blair achieved in 1997. Chance of that happening = zero. The Tories could exhume Jimmy Savile, stick him in a wheelbarrow, plonk a blue rosette on him, and push him around every constituency in Britain and they would STILL beat Labour in 2020.

Beating Labour would not be enough to be sure of remaining in office.

True, but even as the largest party the Tories would get first dibs at forming a government. It's all academic really, a hell of a lot can happen between now and then, and these results have no bearing whatsoever on a general election four years away. It's like someone else said, anyone can vote for anyone in local elections, because they don't really count. Voting for a national government and a PM is completely different. It's like apples and oranges. You cannot extrapolate local results into a general election, but I appreciate it's an exercise which keeps the media, pundits and psephologists titillated. Oh, and anoraks like us!

Taking all that into account, if you were the main opposition party looking for a springboard to the next election, or even a vague pointer, losing seats at a local level should be, and has to be, inconceivable. They should be gaining several hundreds of seats, possibly thousands, and even then, it does not necessarily transfer to a general election (see Mr Miliband for evidence of that).

The only thing Labour should be concentrating on is getting rid of Corbyn, because he will lead them into oblivion.

I agree with most of that. In particular, it is unwise to extrapolate too much from Local Elections - and that is even more the case re -election results just a year into a Parliament. Contrary to most media comment the main Opposition party has done badly at this stage in earlier Parliaments. In 1960 and 1961 despite having been in office for 9/10 years, Harold Macmillan's Tory Govt gained several hundred seats from the Labour opposition. Labour still went on to win the 1964 election.

On your first point, this is indeed true. I don't see how some can say the Tories made no improvement between 2011 and 2015, and imply the same might be true between now and 2020 (as it was the same point in the beloved "cycle") with a straight face. Do the same comparison to 2012, and the Tories made significant progress.

justin124 said:

RobD said:

justin124 said:

Jason said:

justin124 said:

Jason said:

Scotland aside, Labour need a 13% swing in England to win a majority. That's bigger than what Tony Blair achieved in 1997. Chance of that happening = zero. The Tories could exhume Jimmy Savile, stick him in a wheelbarrow, plonk a blue rosette on him, and push him around every constituency in Britain and they would STILL beat Labour in 2020.

Beating Labour would not be enough to be sure of remaining in office.

True, but even as the largest party the Tories would get first dibs at forming a government. It's all academic really, a hell of a lot can happen between now and then, and these results have no bearing whatsoever on a general election four years away. It's like someone else said, anyone can vote for anyone in local elections, because they don't really count. Voting for a national government and a PM is completely different. It's like apples and oranges. You cannot extrapolate local results into a general election, but I appreciate it's an exercise which keeps the media, pundits and psephologists titillated. Oh, and anoraks like us!

Taking all that into account, if you were the main opposition party looking for a springboard to the next election, or even a vague pointer, losing seats at a local level should be, and has to be, inconceivable. They should be gaining several hundreds of seats, possibly thousands, and even then, it does not necessarily transfer to a general election (see Mr Miliband for evidence of that).

The only thing Labour should be concentrating on is getting rid of Corbyn, because he will lead them into oblivion.

I agree with most of that. In particular, it is unwise to extrapolate too much from Local Elections - and that is even more the case re -election results just a year into a Parliament. Contrary to most media comment the main Opposition party has done badly at this stage in earlier Parliaments. In 1960 and 1961 despite having been in office for 9/10 years, Harold Macmillan's Tory Govt gained several hundred seats from the Labour opposition. Labour still went on to win the 1964 election.

On your first point, this is indeed true. I don't see how some can say the Tories made no improvement between 2011 and 2015, and imply the same might be true between now and 2020 (as it was the same point in the beloved "cycle") with a straight face. Do the same comparison to 2012, and the Tories made significant progress.

But 2012 was year 2 of the last Parliament - ie just 3 years before the 2015 election. The equivalent point in this Parliament will be 2017.

I think you missed the whole point of what I was saying.

peter_from_putney said:

Alistair said:

felix said:

Sean_F said:

MTimT said:

LOL After the pollsters got the 2015 GE so wrong, why is Mike now saying that, instead of the pollsters getting the 2016 Locals wrong, CON and UKIP underperformed? Is it not just possible that the pollsters are still getting it wrong but in a different



direction now?

Either way, not good news for Cameron.

You can only compare questions about voting intentions in a general election with outcomes in a general election. Governments almost always underperform their poll ratings in local elections.

Except in Scotland where moderate centre right Tories outperformed the polls and astonishingly Slab - not to mention UKIP and the LDs.

I think the situation in Scotland is a little more unique than that.

It's either unique or it isn't.

That's the joke.

richardDodd said:

Cambridge,Oxford and Norwich..Up to their necks in lefties..up to their knees in knowledge and up to their ankles in intelligence..

Oh dear!! Is that the best you can do? Is something bothering you?

justin124 said:

Jason said:

justin124 said:

Jason said:

Scotland aside, Labour need a 13% swing in England to win a majority. That's bigger than what Tony Blair achieved in 1997. Chance of that happening = zero. The Tories could exhume Jimmy Savile, stick him in a wheelbarrow, plonk a blue rosette on him, and push him around every constituency in Britain and they would STILL beat Labour in 2020.

Beating Labour would not be enough to be sure of remaining in office.

The only thing Labour should be concentrating on is getting rid of Corbyn, because he will lead them into oblivion.

I agree with most of that. In particular, it is unwise to extrapolate too much from Local Elections - and that is even more the case re -election results just a year into a Parliament. Contrary to most media comment the main Opposition party has done badly at this stage in earlier Parliaments. In 1960 and 1961 despite having been in office for 9/10 years, Harold Macmillan's Tory Govt gained several hundred seats from the Labour opposition. Labour still went on to win the 1964 election.

It just goes to prove the point, even more perhaps, that council elections have no real bearing on a future general election. It seems you can gain plenty of seats and go on to lose (Foot, Hague, Miliband, etc) or lose seats and go on to lose ( see Corbyn in 2020), or very rarely, lose seats and still go on to win, like you say, in 1964 (although Labour had nearly 40 Scottish seats going into that election). Surely the point here is that the main opposition party HAS to make gains, substantial ones, all over the UK, to at least boost morale and try and change the media narrative. The London Mayoralty is just noise, because as we all know, London is heavily Labour, and Boris avoided political gravity, despite his party's relative unpopularity in the capital.

None of this even starts to address Labour's annihilation in Scotland, where the public were voting for a government, not just relatively insignificant local seats. Without Scotland, the simple arithmetic is impossible for Labour, unless, by some miracle, they find another Tony Blair to sweep Middle England. I think someone said Labour would need to take Uxbridge off Boris Johnson to get a majority of one, or Justin Greening's Putney (majority of 10,000). Another fact is this. Since 1979, the public have only voted for two changes of government (OK, three if you separate coalition and majority Tory rule), which makes it even tougher for Labour.

No matter how you cut it, it's close to impossible for Labour to win the next election outright, and would take a miracle to even be the largest party.

Labour takes overall control over Bristol council

Bristol Labour take overall control
currently
Lab 37 Con 12 LDem 7 Green 7
3 wards 7 seats to go

Scotland and Wales...who has been serving in Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliamente since their creation in 1999 without interrumption?
It's around 15% in both chambers


Scottish Parliament: 19 out of 129

SNP: Bruce Crawford, Roseanna Cunningham, Fergus Ewing, Linda Fabiani, Christine Grahame, Fiona Hyslop, Michael Matheson, Alex Neil, Shona Robison, Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney, Sandra White
Labour: Jackie Baillie, Johann Lamont, Lewis Macdonald, Ken Macintosh, Elaine Smith
Conservative: Alex Johnstone
Liberal Democrat: Tavish Scott


Welsh Assembly: 9 out of 60

Labour: Carwyn Jones, John Griffiths, Lynne Neagle, Jane Hutt, Ann Jones
Plaid: Elin Jones,Daffyd Elis-Thomas
LD: Kirsty Williams
Con: David Melding

LD Propaganda thread from Mike

murali_s said:

richardDodd said:

murali s.. Not as much as it seems to be bothering you..which one did you go to..or maybe all three..

Sadly none of the above but I have very good friends on the university staff list at Cambridge. UCL (BEng) and Imperial (MBA) for me.

Imperial (BSc, ARCS and PhD) for me

MarkSenior said:

MarkSenior said:

Bristol Labour take overall control
currently
Lab 37 Con 12 LDem 7 Green 7
3 wards 7 seats to go

Southville 2 Greens
Lab 37 Con 12 Green 9 LDem 7

Clifton Down 2 Greens Westbury On Trym to come should be 3 X Con
Lab 37 Con 12 Green 11 LDem 7

Speedy said:

On other news, now that the GOP race is over I'm going over the GE polls a bit, what I discovered is Trump looks a bit UKIPy, his support is almost evenly widespread, here are the latest state polls:

...

Trump can afford to lose 10 points in states where Romney won by 60+% in 2012 as long as he keeps Republicans in swing states on his side plus his democrat switchers and he can win even if he loses the popular vote to Hillary, I estimate that the cutoff point is losing to Hillary by 4-5 points nationally and Trump would still be elected President.

I really don't understand how a result like Clinton 49-44 Trump can lead to a Trump win. Those safe GOP states aren't just irrelevant losses - some of them like Arizona have a meaningful number of electoral votes.
My totally indicative guess is that 49-44 would cause a best-case result like Trump = Romney + Florida + Ohio - North Carolina. 238 electoral votes, not very close to a win. A harsher guess would be Romney - NC - Arizona, for 180 EVs.

EPG said:

Speedy said:

On other news, now that the GOP race is over I'm going over the GE polls a bit, what I discovered is Trump looks a bit UKIPy, his support is almost evenly widespread, here are the latest state polls:

...

Trump can afford to lose 10 points in states where Romney won by 60+% in 2012 as long as he keeps Republicans in swing states on his side plus his democrat switchers and he can win even if he loses the popular vote to Hillary, I estimate that the cutoff point is losing to Hillary by 4-5 points nationally and Trump would still be elected President.

I really don't understand how a result like Clinton 49-44 Trump can lead to a Trump win. Those safe GOP states aren't just irrelevant losses - some of them like Arizona have a meaningful number of electoral votes.
My totally indicative guess is that 49-44 would cause a best-case result like Trump = Romney + Florida + Ohio - North Carolina. 238 electoral votes, not very close to a win. A harsher guess would be Romney - NC - Arizona, for 180 EVs.

Or minus Georgia and Utah too for 158, the worst GOP total since 1964