Blacon on Chester West and Chester (Lab defence, resignation of sitting member) Result: Labour 1,556 (59% +1%), Conservative 574 (22% +4%), Independent 434 (16%, no candidate at last election), Liberal Democrat 70 (3%, no candidate at last election) Labour HOLD with a majority of 982 (37%) on a swing of 1.5% from Lab to Con (notional swing of 1% from Lab to Lib Dem, 0.5% from Lib Dem to Con)
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Tory - 1060
Lib Dem - 1090
Labour - 4137
Other - infinite
That's remarkable vote efficiency for the Tories and Lib Dems (who are usually hit badly by this measure) and hopeless for Labour. Looks like we can't find a good indicator for Labour at the moment, but if they stack up lots of votes while losing seats like this then they are in yet deeper trouble.
Thank you to Mr Meeks for the list of Lab seats and their majorities.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bygi8eZw-4q1Tm54TU02a3E3R0U/view
However, in the current situation, Labour has close to 50 seats that look vulnerable.
Higher! Higher!
PB audience responds "Not in this game!"
People hopefully know they're not voting for Corbyn in the mayorals.
At the moment we seem to have a swing of 7% or so, arguably 8% so everything down to Birmingham Yardley is vulnerable?
@WriteYouMedia
We are told @unitetheunion General Secretary result is 58k for @UniteforLen, 52k for @gerard_coyne and 17k for @ian4unite
"It's a bear!", the book exclaims, complete with a suitably shocked expression from the Labour leader.
Wait until he sees the Tory posters of his comments supporting terrorists.
Guido says from other sources he's heard the same thing, but I guess he's supposed to wait for the formal announcement.
I suspect it is less true locally as Lib Dem votes have floored where they haven't campaigned.
Looking at Wikipedia for 2016:
Tories - 1,424,367 votes for 842 seats = 1692 votes per cllr
Labour - 2,021,566 votes for 1326 seats = 1525 votes per cllr
Lib Dem - 663,697 votes for 378 seats = 1755 votes per cllr
UKIP = 583,435 for 58 seats = 10059 votes per cllr
So not as pronounced as I had expected, but as ever First Past The Post works very well for the big two at the expense of all others.
Macron 24.5 (+0.5)
Le Pen 22.5 (=)
Fillon 19.5 (=)
Melenchon 18.5 (=)
First poll today with some field work done after last night's incident in Paris.
A big dark election.
We can't go over it.
We can't go under it.
Oh no!
We've got to go through it.
I presume it was basically Len (Labour), Coyne (Tory), Ian (LD)
The result is even worse when you factor in the Independent Labour candidates last time - who polled somewhere around the 14% mark - you'd expect most of their votes to go to Labour, and for Labour to benefit a bit from not appearing so divided this time. The anti-Labour swing is therefore understated in the summary above. So actually the result is pretty catastrophic for Labour, particularly given that the ward is a) in London and b) has a high ethnic population.
Moving a bet from "open" to "void" is a unilateral cancellation on their part (since the overall market is clearly still in play) in my book, and I have responded accordingly. WTS.
This is crazy. Emmanuel Macron may not win the first round - the polls might be wrong, there might be a late swing - but he should surely now be odds-on favourite to do so.
I've backed both !
I'd be surprised if they reinstate the bet, but it'd be great if they did.
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McCluskey squeaks narrow win. When I wrote a couple of weeks ago it would be close his supporters said it was 'fake news'.