How the pollsters performed on Thursday – politicalbetting.com
How the pollsters performed on Thursday – politicalbetting.com
Now the final result for #GE24 is in, I have calculated pollsters' total absolute error (for all parties, relative to UK/GB vote share depending on the target population). pic.twitter.com/HlrMESXdOd
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Is the era of ‘posh boy’ dominance really over?
Keir Starmer’s cabinet is almost entirely state-educated, ending many years of public school chumocracy. It points to a deeper shift in the British class system
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/is-the-era-of-posh-boy-dominance-really-over-kn3g7bmw7
Leadership and How To Do Opposition
These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.
Leadership
1. See the basic principles from my earlier post on previous thread. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.
2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.
3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.
4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.
5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.
Opposition
This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.
You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.
Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.
New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.
Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.
Do not copy the USA.
Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
Felt like a lot of the polls were badly wrong - and in a way that influenced the political narrative
Polls are never going to be accurate with so many people deciding late, unless there isn’t any difference between those folks and the rest of us.
YouGov appears to be the gold standard in MRPs, doubtless because of its huge panel giving a reasonable sample in every seat and the amount of back-data it has on them (us).
The Curtis Exit Poll appears to have a fairly crude methodology - how else do Finchley and Cambridge get marked down as LibDem gains? - but in the round, it worked. They’d do better in future to keep the workings to themselves.
Firstly, Sunak left the D-Day commemorations early, a catastrophic political misjudgment which made his personal ratings plummet. He left just after the King, something his aides did not want to brief during the campaign because it would have dragged the monarchy into it.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rishi-sunak-tory-prime-minister-wdvwz0tpp
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c
I hate to bring up TRANS yet again, but I successfully transitioned twice this morning. And I'm still barely human...
Oh, 'transition' can mean more than one thing?
On Tuesday I created those graphics from Survation's MRP mainly trying to (a) ramp the LDs and (b) wind up the cybernats.
Survation said LD 61 SNP 10. Finish was LD 72 SNP 9 - so not that far out overall even if the seat by seat predictions were dodgy.
I’d cut him some slack. Sunak not so much.
I am convinced that shy tories came back to them at last minute over supermajority warnings - enough to upend the polling predictions by a few points. Based on my gut and no evidence
You can't take the Scottish electorate for granted. Zero party loyalty. It looks like that trend is extending to England now too.
Leaking about it is such shitty behaviour.
Only just missed out.
Quite a few SNP MPs past and present follow me on Twitter and lurk on here, from Alex Salmond downwards.
(Another PBer did say the Argyll, Bute, and South Lochaber seat had parts further south than Stirling though.)
OTOH I think it's hard to get the method right. Turnout was probably flying all over the place throughout the polling period, and plenty of people decided they wouldn't bother on the day and or only decided their vote on their day - and it's impossible to pick that all up.
And even the Exit Poll was a bit out, against both the Tories and Reform as it happens.
I was elected to my former council in 1994, and at that election an unbroken series of Conservative majorities since the council had been created came to an end, with the council going balanced and a minority Labour administration taking office for the first time.
All but a handful of the Conservative councillors were used to making decisions and having the council carry them out, and being in opposition came as a massive shock. At the first budget setting meeting, we had sorted out the budget with the Labour Group in advance, and the Tories simply couldn’t cope with the reality that all their amendments were simply going to be voted down. They reacted by raising points of order and recorded votes and making lengthy speeches, such that we carried on through the night and the budget was not actually set until 4am the following morning.
How many of the current bunch of Tory MPs are new to parliament, and won’t have to go through the denial stage?
The problem for the SNP is that they made out that *any* criticism was unpatriotic. Which is just bollocks. Telling voters that they have to put up with the mess because its "for Scotland" went down catastrophically.
I knew they would do badly because so many people were telling me they were utterly sick of them.
Those who wanted to vote against did so.
The first three lessons the Conservatives need to learn:
1) Personal conduct matters. In particular if you bring in new laws and regulations you have to obey them yourselves.
2) Competence matters. Proper preparation and attention to detail is vital.
3) Crony capitalism and rentierism are not the same as wealth creation and a yearning for unearned money is not the same as proper work.
Three quarters (75%) of those who voted for Reform UK or the Liberal Democrats said they decided at some point within the last month, compared to 59% of Tories and 41% of Labour voters. Those who voted for the SNP were the most likely to say they always knew how they would end up voting (43%).
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2024/07/how-britain-voted-and-why-my-post-vote-poll/
Hilary Benn puts his foot down on no more money to buy off Stormont.
Great start.
Cameron and Shapps must have know - so did they agree with Sunak's decision or did they try to change his mind ?
It was probably both. And the weather. And the phase of the moon.
The Tories control the southernmost parts of Scotland so you work from there and with the SNP getting mullered in the central belt/Glasgow
As I said, I suspect a 10% increse in turnout would have gone at least three-quarters to the Conservative vote.
But it didn't happen. And we lost a bunch of MPs as a consequence.
Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252.
The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
Explains how my MPs prediction was so off.
Listen to the man on AQ yesterday; he’s off his head.
Quite obviously Labour fell some way short of the 13% lead required for a majority of one.
Hence the hopelessly Hung Parliament we now face.
I'd argue a lot of potential Labour supporters didn't bother because they knew the party was going to win and had there been a higher turnout there would have been more Labour seats.
In South Devon, for example, the turnout was 69% rather than 75% but Manganall was thumped by over 7,000 votes so it can't just be that. The Conservative and Labour votes collapsed to Reform and the LDs respectively. The combined Con/Lab share went from 70% to 38% so there's something else at work.
Every seat has its different story - I suspect turnout was related to the amount of campaigning raising awareness there was an election and indeed a contested election. Harder to motivate voters in a seat like East Ham where there is only one winner.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3ge4kd8kl9o
Alison Griffiths Bognor Regis and Littlehampton
Ashley Fox Bridgwater
Charlie Dewhirst Bridlington and The Wolds
Peter Fortune Bromley and Biggin Hill
Bradley Thomas Bromsgrove
Lewis Cocking Broxbourne
Patrick Spencer Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
Aphra Brandreth Chester South and Eddisbury
John Cooper Dumfries and Galloway
David Reed Exmouth and Exeter East
Greg Stafford Farnham and Bordon
Andrew Snowden Fylde
Harriet Cross Gordon and Buchan
Ben Obese-Jecty Huntingdon
Joe Robertson Isle of Wight East
Shivani Raja Leicester East
Blake Stephenson Mid Bedfordshire
Peter Bedford Mid Leicestershire
Rebecca Paul Reigate
Neil Shastri-Hurst Solihull West and Shirley
Sarah Bool South Northamptonshire
Rebecca Smith South West Devon
Lincoln Jopp Spelthorne
Katie Lam Weald of Kent
Nick Timothy West Suffolk
Jack Rankin Windsor
(Source https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/ if you want to play yourselves.)
Anyone spot any talent there?
Only a third of Reform voters had the Tories as their second choice. Almost the same number had Labour/Lib Dem/Green.
Given the ruthless tactical voting we saw from the latter three, the result would have been similar without Reform.
Take South Devon for example 69% turnout with a LD gain on massive swing. This is a similar turnout to 2015 for example, though slightly down on 2017 or 2019.
I appreciate that you are trying to find a reason for your own canvassing being so wrong, but it wasn't turnout.
Labour turnout was poor in many of its "safe seats" for example Leicester South or Houghton and South Sunderland.
I think the significantly reduced turnout explains a great deal of the polling error. It is even possible that Mogg was right and that voter ID suppressed Tory voters.
Lincoln Jopp was a minor character edited out of Star Wars at an early draft.
I seem to recall he was a medical doctor, military veteran, and a barrister. Sounds like an overachieving type.
*Amazingly after gaining 37.% to win the by-election (despite some Labour figures saying they were wrong to claim they could win from 10%), the LDs increased theri vote share at the GE, +42.5% from 2019.
Giles Brandreth’s daughter is probably dippy and harmless.
Nick Timothy we all know - at least he’s a thinker. And the social care proposal was actually quite sensible, except during the middle of an election campaign.
The rest, who knows? ConHome has done some profiles. It’s the 95 who are returning and have still to adjust to being essentially irrelevant for the next five years, that we should worry about.
Had to edit auto correct that gave me Ashram for Aphra
Shame that it's so difficult and expensive to do a proper random sample.
. In a past life I used an opposition budget response to sink the Labour PPC who sat as a councillor in the ruling group by putting forward an amendment I knew her group would be compelled to vote against. Up until that point the local press had been hands off criticising her despite having a few different stories that could be used. This amendment had her voting against a cause that only a month earlier she had championed and got lots of positive coverage from.
The local press went to town and it broke the dam on the other stuff, she lost a seat that was projected to be gained.
FPTP fairly consistently gives results which are poorly correlated with the actual number of votes cast for parties. And historically, sears which elect the proverbial donkey with a rosette.
I suspect that leads to a general sense of “voting doesn’t make any difference”, which is hard to cut through even when the government is spectacularly unpopular.
Saying the country is "instinctively conservative" implies they somehow own the voters, they don't. It's also hard to conclude that when the Tories just got their lowest voteshare and seats in history.
But I have heard no solutions thus far from any of the potential candidates about how they intend to return to the centre ground or to win back people they lost. We've had let's just add Reform's votes to the Tories, neglecting all the voters they lost to the Lib Dems and Labour, we've had "immigration is the issue" despite it not being even on the top three list of the concerns of voters. We've had "there's no enthusiasm for SKS", despite him having just won the second largest Labour majority ever.
None of this has changed my mind that at this rate, the Tories will be out for a decade. There seems to be no want to understand that any voter under about 65 does not and will not vote Conservative and that going down a more right wing path will not bring these people back.
The Tories are dead as of right now. Let's hope for all our sakes, they decide to look at what Sir Keir did after 2019.
I'm not sure if this is shock, or a pause to take stock?
Either way. It's a blessed relief, and I'm not keen to have it end any time soon.
I am cautiously optimistic that SKS may fit this category. The first such leader since Margaret Thatcher.
His treatment of Labours "longest" serving MP and former leader along with others like Abbot was shabby and ruthless but arguably necessary to purge the party of trots and make it electable in a fraction of the time it took Kinnock/Smith/Blair.
The next test is whether he will be the first PM since Thatcher to realise that the press /media can only print papers /broadcast talk and can only hurt you or drive you off course if you let them.