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It’s not a good win for Reform but a great win for the Greens – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 12,973
edited 7:56AM in General
It’s not a good win for Reform but a great win for the Greens – politicalbetting.com

Tomorrow will see one of the biggest Get Out The Vote operations in the history of British politics. I cannot give you the numbers but we have an army. Thank you to all those supporting our campaign. I salute you ?

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 54,422
    edited 7:59AM
    First! Like friendly dog-owning Hannah the plumber!
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 34,175
    Can someone please confirm whether Labour would have had to fight a Mayoral election when Burnham stepped down, or whether (as I heard) his deputy could have completed his term?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 42,595
    @columnist.bsky.social‬

    I mean I know we all thought the McSweeney strategy was boneheaded but now we have actual scientific proof of its lunacy

    ‪@tpgroberts.bsky.social‬

    Did it attract hero voters?

    No.

    Did it at least prevent a resurgence of the radical right?

    Well, also no.

    But it at least enabled the left and centre to swing in behind Labour?

    Ha, you're not going to believe this...
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 126,546
    edited 8:00AM
    Luckyguy1983 said:

    Can someone please confirm whether Labour would have had to fight a Mayoral election when Burnham stepped down, or whether (as I heard) his deputy could have completed his term?

    Theoretically they could have completed the term but the political pressures means we would have had a mayoral election.
  • nico67nico67 Posts: 7,056
    Luckyguy1983 said:

    Can someone please confirm whether Labour would have had to fight a Mayoral election when Burnham stepped down, or whether (as I heard) his deputy could have completed his term?

    Hi deputy could have finished the term but there would have been a lot of pressure to hold a new election.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 19,077
    I thought the Greens would win, and they did, but I was just following the herd there. I suggested turnout might be high and it was about the same as at the general election.

    In the Con/LD matched bet, I thought the LDs were value with longer odds. The Conservative candidate beat the LD, but only by 13 votes.

    I thought the Communist League might come last, and they did. I was confident Rejoin EU would not come last, and they didn’t, coming 4th from last, but they did worse than I expected. I was surprised (but happy) how badly Advance UK did (0.4% and behind the loonies), which doesn’t seem like a good sign for those ramping Restore Britain on the betting markets.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 21,722
    edited 8:04AM
    Luckyguy1983 said:

    Can someone please confirm whether Labour would have had to fight a Mayoral election when Burnham stepped down, or whether (as I heard) his deputy could have completed his term?

    In theory, yes.

    In practice, the politics would have been far worse than the council elections thing. It wasn't a runner.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 54,422
    edited 8:06AM
    On the back of Curtis's analysis, my take on the result is that the Labour loss was clearly nailed on from the start - whether their apparent late-campaign optimism was genuine delusion, or manufactured for the media coverage is an interesting question. But, given the mathematical mountain that needed to be climbed to topple Labour's massive majority, there were far more voters than we imagined who were simply trying to suss out which of the insurgent parties was best placed to defeat Labour. One way or another, enough of them worked out during the closing weeks that this was the Greens, hence in the event they won quite convincingly. Probably helped considerably by having a more media- and voter-friendly candidate with genuine local connections and track record.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 126,546
    IanB2 said:

    On the back of Curtis's analysis, my take on the result is that the Labour loss was clearly nailed on from the start - whether their apparent late-campaign optimism was genuine delusion, or manufactured for the media coverage is an interesting question. But, given the mathematical mountain that needed to be climbed to topple Labour's massive majority, there were far more voters than we imagined who were simply trying to suss out which of the insurgent parties was best placed to defeat Labour. One way or another, enough of them worked out during the closing weeks that this was the Greens, hence in the event they won quite convincingly. Probably helped considerably by having a more media- and voter-friendly candidate with genuine local connections.

    I don't think it was delusion, the Opinium poll implied it was a three horse race.

    You don't send the PM out to the seat unless you thought you had a chance.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 19,077
    IanB2 said:

    On the back of Curtis's analysis, my take on the result is that the Labour loss was clearly nailed on from the start - whether their apparent late-campaign optimism was genuine delusion, or manufactured for the media coverage is an interesting question. But, given the mathematical mountain that needed to be climbed to topple Labour's massive majority, there were far more voters than we imagined who were simply trying to suss out which of the insurgent parties was best placed to defeat Labour. One way or another, enough of them worked out during the closing weeks that this was the Greens, hence in the event they won quite convincingly.

    The anti-Reform vote was fairly split (1.6:1), but was so large that that didn’t matter.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 24,565
    I agree with everything TSE says in the header.

    This was the worst possible result for Labour.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 70,364
    Very bad news coming out of US on business front. Paramount to take over WBD and that means the end of CNN.
  • nico67nico67 Posts: 7,056
    IanB2 said:

    On the back of Curtis's analysis, my take on the result is that the Labour loss was clearly nailed on from the start - whether their apparent late-campaign optimism was genuine delusion, or manufactured for the media coverage is an interesting question. But, given the mathematical mountain that needed to be climbed to topple Labour's massive majority, there were far more voters than we imagined who were simply trying to suss out which of the insurgent parties was best placed to defeat Labour. One way or another, enough of them worked out during the closing weeks that this was the Greens, hence in the event they won quite convincingly.

    The Muslim vote was the key difference . And not every seat has the large concentration seen here . The community red line was Gaza and this issue allowed the Greens other less than vote winning positions to be ignored .

    This won’t be the same across many seats . Their drug policy is a step too far for many people and will get more of an airing in the locals .

    It’s irrelevant whether it’s logical or in the longer term a better way of combating drug use . Ask the vast majority of people should crack and heroine be legalised ?



  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 54,422
    TheScreamingEagles said:

    IanB2 said:

    On the back of Curtis's analysis, my take on the result is that the Labour loss was clearly nailed on from the start - whether their apparent late-campaign optimism was genuine delusion, or manufactured for the media coverage is an interesting question. But, given the mathematical mountain that needed to be climbed to topple Labour's massive majority, there were far more voters than we imagined who were simply trying to suss out which of the insurgent parties was best placed to defeat Labour. One way or another, enough of them worked out during the closing weeks that this was the Greens, hence in the event they won quite convincingly. Probably helped considerably by having a more media- and voter-friendly candidate with genuine local connections.

    I don't think it was delusion, the Opinium poll implied it was a three horse race.

    You don't send the PM out to the seat unless you thought you had a chance.
    I think that's right - the positve noises were coming from too many places to be a concerted effort to project optimisim in the face of impending defeat. Which means, either that voters weren't telling Labour canvassers the truth, or that Labour's post-McSweeney technology-enabled canvassing operation isn't quite as effective as our party-insider Brixian has been claiming?
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 46,753
    Missed this one. They really brought out all the big guns, all they needed was ‘Queen’ Camilla stating that voters should think very carefully.

    https://x.com/defencebrink/status/2027028531310428488?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q



  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 13,517
    I feel a bit sorry for Muslim voters. Their choice in this by-election was between a party open discussing mass-expulsions, another that refuses to criticise the ongoing genocide of a Muslim population, and the Greens.
  • TheValiantTheValiant Posts: 2,087
    How does a country that uses First Past the Post as its system, somehow manage to end up with 5 party politics?
  • nico67nico67 Posts: 7,056
    edited 8:13AM
    rottenborough said:

    Very bad news coming out of US on business front. Paramount to take over WBD and that means the end of CNN.

    Turning CNN into Fox lite will see their ratings implode so not great for the advertisers and therefore revenues .
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 46,753
    rottenborough said:

    Very bad news coming out of US on business front. Paramount to take over WBD and that means the end of CNN.

    Isn’t that more the freedom of the press rather than the business front?
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 19,077
    The polls did quite well. The two with triple-figure sample sizes got the result right. What’s maybe interesting is that they correctly predicted the Labour and Reform vote shares, but underestimated the Greens. So where did the extra Green votes come from? The polls overestimated most of the other candidates: Con, LD, Rejoin EU, etc. Does that suggest last minute anti-Reform tactical voting?
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 24,565
    TheScreamingEagles said:

    IanB2 said:

    On the back of Curtis's analysis, my take on the result is that the Labour loss was clearly nailed on from the start - whether their apparent late-campaign optimism was genuine delusion, or manufactured for the media coverage is an interesting question. But, given the mathematical mountain that needed to be climbed to topple Labour's massive majority, there were far more voters than we imagined who were simply trying to suss out which of the insurgent parties was best placed to defeat Labour. One way or another, enough of them worked out during the closing weeks that this was the Greens, hence in the event they won quite convincingly. Probably helped considerably by having a more media- and voter-friendly candidate with genuine local connections.

    I don't think it was delusion, the Opinium poll implied it was a three horse race.

    You don't send the PM out to the seat unless you thought you had a chance.
    Apparently we spoke to 30,000 voters. That must have been sufficient to make it clear that this was a lost cause.

    Trying not to come third was the likely objective of the GOTV effort.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 7,589
    To add to the President Kennedy and 9-11 questions, “where were you the night Starmer killed the Labour Party?”. Also killed last night, YourParty.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 134,355
    Labour weren't right to block Burnham, clearly that made this result into the absolute disaster it was for the party, losing the seat to the Greens and coming third behind Reform.

    With the Tories also having a terrible night and losing their deposit the pressure is on both Kemi and SKS in May, whichever of the Tories or Labour comes behind the other on the NEV after the local and devolved elections will now almost certainly be removed by their party as leader
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 8,786
    nico67 said:

    IanB2 said:

    On the back of Curtis's analysis, my take on the result is that the Labour loss was clearly nailed on from the start - whether their apparent late-campaign optimism was genuine delusion, or manufactured for the media coverage is an interesting question. But, given the mathematical mountain that needed to be climbed to topple Labour's massive majority, there were far more voters than we imagined who were simply trying to suss out which of the insurgent parties was best placed to defeat Labour. One way or another, enough of them worked out during the closing weeks that this was the Greens, hence in the event they won quite convincingly.

    The Muslim vote was the key difference . And not every seat has the large concentration seen here . The community red line was Gaza and this issue allowed the Greens other less than vote winning positions to be ignored .

    This won’t be the same across many seats . Their drug policy is a step too far for many people and will get more of an airing in the locals .

    It’s irrelevant whether it’s logical or in the longer term a better way of combating drug use . Ask the vast majority of people should crack and heroine be legalised ?



    It goes back to the big question we all have which is are these votes for insurgent parties protests that will fix themselves come the GE (by putting enough pressure on their respective “‘mainstream” parties) or are they something more significant.

    I completely agree that there’ll be plenty of Green policy to attack, but the question is how much core constituencies like young voters will care about that if they think a bit of radicalism will change their life chances. And also what the alternative looks like.

    If Labour can’t put the Green Genie (I might copyright that) back in the lamp, and the Tories continue to be utterly outmanoeuvred by Farage, then we are starting to look at an incredibly polarised election in 2029 where people could be driven to the extremes for the very purpose of stopping their opponents.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 134,355
    rottenborough said:

    Very bad news coming out of US on business front. Paramount to take over WBD and that means the end of CNN.

    Paramount takes over CNN not necessarily the end of CNN
  • RogerRoger Posts: 22,283
    IanB2 said:

    On the back of Curtis's analysis, my take on the result is that the Labour loss was clearly nailed on from the start - whether their apparent late-campaign optimism was genuine delusion, or manufactured for the media coverage is an interesting question. But, given the mathematical mountain that needed to be climbed to topple Labour's massive majority, there were far more voters than we imagined who were simply trying to suss out which of the insurgent parties was best placed to defeat Labour. One way or another, enough of them worked out during the closing weeks that this was the Greens, hence in the event they won quite convincingly. Probably helped considerably by having a more media- and voter-friendly candidate with genuine local connections and track record.

    Ylou make a good point. A vote for Labour was pointless. They need an extra seat like a hole in the head. They have hundreds You might as well vote Rejoin. Pointless.The only votes that had any significance were Green or Reform.

    Both needed the momentum and Green got it. Well done to them. Let's hope it gives them the TV time the BBC and other media outlets have been giving Farages Fascists for the last year and a half
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 70,364
    Scott_xP said:

    @columnist.bsky.social‬

    I mean I know we all thought the McSweeney strategy was boneheaded but now we have actual scientific proof of its lunacy

    ‪@tpgroberts.bsky.social‬

    Did it attract hero voters?

    No.

    Did it at least prevent a resurgence of the radical right?

    Well, also no.

    But it at least enabled the left and centre to swing in behind Labour?

    Ha, you're not going to believe this...

    The McSweeney strategy worked astonishingly well in the GE in 2024. Near Blair-level landslide.

    It would be very very hard for any party to pivot from that in the space of 18months to a completely different approach.

  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 24,565
    Eabhal said:

    I feel a bit sorry for Muslim voters. Their choice in this by-election was between a party open discussing mass-expulsions, another that refuses to criticise the ongoing genocide of a Muslim population, and the Greens.

    Luckily they've got a guy at the Mosque who makes the decision for them.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 60,162
    Sky News clip:

    Sam Coates - "I tried to speak to a number of members of the South Asian community. Women turned to me and said, "No, my husband deals with that."

    https://x.com/gbpolitcs/status/2027184048028753976
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 24,565
    HYUFD said:

    Labour weren't right to block Burnham, clearly that made this result into the absolute disaster it was for the party, losing the seat to the Greens and coming third behind Reform.

    With the Tories also having a terrible night and losing their deposit the pressure is on both Kemi and SKS in May, whichever of the Tories or Labour comes behind the other on the NEV after the local and devolved elections will now almost certainly be removed by their party as leader

    If they both come behind the LibDems should they both go?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 55,377
    Eabhal said:

    I feel a bit sorry for Muslim voters. Their choice in this by-election was between a party open discussing mass-expulsions, another that refuses to criticise the ongoing genocide of a Muslim population, and the Greens.

    I wonder if some of the Gaza independents start to caucus with Greens, or even formally change. Possibly even JC himself, but I am thinking more of Adam etc.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 46,753
    Anyway, I suppose everyone can unite in having a good laugh at Kate Ferguson falling for the old overheard on a train line.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 60,162
    nico67 said:

    rottenborough said:

    Very bad news coming out of US on business front. Paramount to take over WBD and that means the end of CNN.

    Turning CNN into Fox lite will see their ratings implode so not great for the advertisers and therefore revenues .
    It’s interesting that during the first Trump term, the anti-Trump news networks all had record high ratings, but in his second term they now have record low ratings.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 19,077
    Fairliered said:

    To add to the President Kennedy and 9-11 questions, “where were you the night Starmer killed the Labour Party?”. Also killed last night, YourParty.

    The Corbyn faction beat the Sultana faction in the Your Party internal elections. I suggest that’s probably the better result for the party. Whether they can come back from all the chaos so far… yeah, probably not.
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 9,132
    IanB2 said:

    On the back of Curtis's analysis, my take on the result is that the Labour loss was clearly nailed on from the start - whether their apparent late-campaign optimism was genuine delusion, or manufactured for the media coverage is an interesting question. But, given the mathematical mountain that needed to be climbed to topple Labour's massive majority, there were far more voters than we imagined who were simply trying to suss out which of the insurgent parties was best placed to defeat Labour. One way or another, enough of them worked out during the closing weeks that this was the Greens, hence in the event they won quite convincingly. Probably helped considerably by having a more media- and voter-friendly candidate with genuine local connections and track record.

    It also makes me wonder whether Starmer saved Burnham. If he had been the candidate Labour might well have still lost. Which would have been hilarious to be fair.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 54,422
    rottenborough said:

    Scott_xP said:

    @columnist.bsky.social‬

    I mean I know we all thought the McSweeney strategy was boneheaded but now we have actual scientific proof of its lunacy

    ‪@tpgroberts.bsky.social‬

    Did it attract hero voters?

    No.

    Did it at least prevent a resurgence of the radical right?

    Well, also no.

    But it at least enabled the left and centre to swing in behind Labour?

    Ha, you're not going to believe this...

    The McSweeney strategy worked astonishingly well in the GE in 2024. Near Blair-level landslide.

    It would be very very hard for any party to pivot from that in the space of 18months to a completely different approach.

    How much of said strategy was political positioning, and how much simply deployment of resources and the technicals of campaigning? And how much just luck? Fighting elections (on the ground) is one of those human activities where the ratio of human effort to observable consequence is often extremely high.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 134,355
    edited 8:21AM
    SandyRentool said:

    HYUFD said:

    Labour weren't right to block Burnham, clearly that made this result into the absolute disaster it was for the party, losing the seat to the Greens and coming third behind Reform.

    With the Tories also having a terrible night and losing their deposit the pressure is on both Kemi and SKS in May, whichever of the Tories or Labour comes behind the other on the NEV after the local and devolved elections will now almost certainly be removed by their party as leader

    If they both come behind the LibDems should they both go?
    If their parties both come behind not only Reform and the Greens but the LDs as well in May that would certainly be a possibility that both are removed
  • nico67nico67 Posts: 7,056
    rottenborough said:

    Scott_xP said:

    @columnist.bsky.social‬

    I mean I know we all thought the McSweeney strategy was boneheaded but now we have actual scientific proof of its lunacy

    ‪@tpgroberts.bsky.social‬

    Did it attract hero voters?

    No.

    Did it at least prevent a resurgence of the radical right?

    Well, also no.

    But it at least enabled the left and centre to swing in behind Labour?

    Ha, you're not going to believe this...

    The McSweeney strategy worked astonishingly well in the GE in 2024. Near Blair-level landslide.

    It would be very very hard for any party to pivot from that in the space of 18months to a completely different approach.

    Winning against the Tories in 2024 wasn’t really genius . McSweeney drove this Reform chasing and it’s delivered nothing since . This result will hopefully act as a wake up call .


  • FF43FF43 Posts: 18,961
    FF43 said:

    It's a repeat of Caerphilly. A not-Labour party can win big against Reform in a Labour seat. Tactical voting works, but you can only have one target, which is Reform in this case, I think.

    How this plays out across the very large Labour estate, I'm not sure, but it doesn't look good for Labour.

    Should add, while desperate for Labour, it was an equally bad loss for Goodwin. Reform was competing for third place with the tactically voted against Labour, miles behind the winners. Not where an insurgent party needs to be.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 54,422
    TheValiant said:

    How does a country that uses First Past the Post as its system, somehow manage to end up with 5 party politics?

    Our system has protected the two main parties when many other countries have seen old parties swept away - but there's a tipping point and it's now working to help voters wipe them out!
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 70,364
    edited 8:21AM
    Oh dear.

    Sharon Graham accuses Lab leadership of paying too much attention to their "rich mates".

    Heidi Alexender responds by saying she only has a few rich mates and she knocks on a lot of doors in Swindon each weekend.

    Today BBC4
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 9,786
    Ladbrokes have just paid up on my 11/2 on the Greens.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 65,602
    Sandpit said:

    Sky News clip:

    Sam Coates - "I tried to speak to a number of members of the South Asian community. Women turned to me and said, "No, my husband deals with that."

    https://x.com/gbpolitcs/status/2027184048028753976

    It's deeply depressing.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 22,283
    HYUFD said:

    rottenborough said:

    Very bad news coming out of US on business front. Paramount to take over WBD and that means the end of CNN.

    Paramount takes over CNN not necessarily the end of CNN
    With a political agenda unfortunately
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 24,565
    bondegezou said:

    Fairliered said:

    To add to the President Kennedy and 9-11 questions, “where were you the night Starmer killed the Labour Party?”. Also killed last night, YourParty.

    The Corbyn faction beat the Sultana faction in the Your Party internal elections. I suggest that’s probably the better result for the party. Whether they can come back from all the chaos so far… yeah, probably not.
    YP and the Workers demonstrated that the best way to defeat their mortal enemy is to not field a candidate.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 19,077
    edited 8:23AM
    Foxy said:

    Eabhal said:

    I feel a bit sorry for Muslim voters. Their choice in this by-election was between a party open discussing mass-expulsions, another that refuses to criticise the ongoing genocide of a Muslim population, and the Greens.

    I wonder if some of the Gaza independents start to caucus with Greens, or even formally change. Possibly even JC himself, but I am thinking more of Adam etc.
    It looked as though they might abandon Your Party if Sultana won the internal elections, but she didn’t. With the Corbyn faction in charge, it’s now Sultana who’s more likely to flounce.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 54,422
    Sandpit said:

    Sky News clip:

    Sam Coates - "I tried to speak to a number of members of the South Asian community. Women turned to me and said, "No, my husband deals with that."

    https://x.com/gbpolitcs/status/2027184048028753976

    They should have interviewed Big G, then, for balance?
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 8,786
    Theuniondivvie said:

    Anyway, I suppose everyone can unite in having a good laugh at Kate Ferguson falling for the old overheard on a train line.

    It’s also been a useful reminder that betting odds are sometimes right as well!

    I miscalculated the Labour/Green vote. I thought the mood music from Labour was positive enough that they’d actually hold up better than they did (interesting to see if we hear any more on that in the coming days). I generally expected Reform to come 2nd though.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 24,565
    Sandpit said:

    Sky News clip:

    Sam Coates - "I tried to speak to a number of members of the South Asian community. Women turned to me and said, "No, my husband deals with that."

    https://x.com/gbpolitcs/status/2027184048028753976

    There's no such thing as the "South Asian community".

    That's like saying Geordies and Mackems are "the North East community".
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 70,364
    Tough gig for Heidi Alexander on R4 and she sounds close to tears with it all to be honest.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 10,981
    edited 8:29AM
    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    It's a repeat of Caerphilly. A not-Labour party can win big against Reform in a Labour seat. Tactical voting works, but you can only have one target, which is Reform in this case, I think.

    How this plays out across the very large Labour estate, I'm not sure, but it doesn't look good for Labour.

    Should add, while desperate for Labour, it was an equally bad loss for Goodwin. Reform was competing for third place with the tactically voted against Labour, miles behind the winners. Not where an insurgent party needs to be.
    Yes, many people seemed sure that he would win. The coming win, the man of the hour, the bright rosy dawn for Refiorm Britain.

    It also shows that social media can still sometimes be a bubble.
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 8,786
    IanB2 said:

    TheValiant said:

    How does a country that uses First Past the Post as its system, somehow manage to end up with 5 party politics?

    Our system has protected the two main parties when many other countries have seen old parties swept away - but there's a tipping point and it's now working to help voters wipe them out!
    If you want an example of what the next GE result could conceivably look like, take a look at our friends over the Channel.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 54,422
    Barnesian said:

    Ladbrokes have just paid up on my 11/2 on the Greens.

    Me too! Must be down to Casino phoning the help desk!
  • Sweeney74Sweeney74 Posts: 153
    has there been any indication given of the number of postal votes, can't find anything online.
  • El_CapitanoEl_Capitano Posts: 4,262
    Sandpit said:

    Sky News clip:

    Sam Coates - "I tried to speak to a number of members of the South Asian community. Women turned to me and said, "No, my husband deals with that."

    https://x.com/gbpolitcs/status/2027184048028753976

    You play on the pitch where the match is being held.

    Yes, family voting is a thing. Labour has benefited from it enormously in the past. Anyone with any tactical nous campaigning in a Muslim constituency (or division, or ward) knows about it. We have a city councillor round here who is thick as cowshit and whose continued presence is only attributable to - let's say - community ties.

    Reform squealing about it, as if it has come as some great surprise to them, is just further evidence that they have no local organisation. Reform are, more or less, a media-created construct. That can get you a long way - in many places across Britain, people now spend more time consuming the media (in its widest definition) than interacting with community networks of the sort that still exist in Muslim areas. But it's not yet clear that Reform actually have the organisation to win the 300 seats the polls are projecting.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 19,077
    El_Capitano said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sky News clip:

    Sam Coates - "I tried to speak to a number of members of the South Asian community. Women turned to me and said, "No, my husband deals with that."

    https://x.com/gbpolitcs/status/2027184048028753976

    You play on the pitch where the match is being held.

    Yes, family voting is a thing. Labour has benefited from it enormously in the past. Anyone with any tactical nous campaigning in a Muslim constituency (or division, or ward) knows about it. We have a city councillor round here who is thick as cowshit and whose continued presence is only attributable to - let's say - community ties.

    Reform squealing about it, as if it has come as some great surprise to them, is just further evidence that they have no local organisation. Reform are, more or less, a media-created construct. That can get you a long way - in many places across Britain, people now spend more time consuming the media (in its widest definition) than interacting with community networks of the sort that still exist in Muslim areas. But it's not yet clear that Reform actually have the organisation to win the 300 seats the polls are projecting.
    There are wives outside the South Asian community who defer to their husbands’ views too. MAGA encourage that attitude on the other side of the Atlantic. What’s the solution? Clear civics lessons in schools?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 55,377
    Sweeney74 said:

    has there been any indication given of the number of postal votes, can't find anything online.

    9000 was reported in the thread last night.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 134,355
    edited 8:35AM
    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    It's a repeat of Caerphilly. A not-Labour party can win big against Reform in a Labour seat. Tactical voting works, but you can only have one target, which is Reform in this case, I think.

    How this plays out across the very large Labour estate, I'm not sure, but it doesn't look good for Labour.

    Should add, while desperate for Labour, it was an equally bad loss for Goodwin. Reform was competing for third place with the tactically voted against Labour, miles behind the winners. Not where an insurgent party needs to be.
    Reform were actually par. They got 29% and the latest Nowcast projects Reform to get 27% in Gorton and Denton so Reform if anything slightly overperformed, just the Greens massively overperformed and Labour did much worse than projected in a seat they were still forecast to hold despite being forecast to lose nationally. As a result any Labour MP elected in 2024 will be panicking this morning, none of them are safe

    https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 60,162
    SandyRentool said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sky News clip:

    Sam Coates - "I tried to speak to a number of members of the South Asian community. Women turned to me and said, "No, my husband deals with that."

    https://x.com/gbpolitcs/status/2027184048028753976

    There's no such thing as the "South Asian community".

    That's like saying Geordies and Mackems are "the North East community".
    I know what they mean, you know what they mean…
  • RogerRoger Posts: 22,283
    A very good Labour MP speaking to the odious Nick Robinson. Bright and polite unlike Robinson. Heidi Alexander
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 134,355
    Roger said:

    HYUFD said:

    rottenborough said:

    Very bad news coming out of US on business front. Paramount to take over WBD and that means the end of CNN.

    Paramount takes over CNN not necessarily the end of CNN
    With a political agenda unfortunately
    Though Paramount is hardly Fox or even GB news
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 13,517
    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    It's a repeat of Caerphilly. A not-Labour party can win big against Reform in a Labour seat. Tactical voting works, but you can only have one target, which is Reform in this case, I think.

    How this plays out across the very large Labour estate, I'm not sure, but it doesn't look good for Labour.

    Should add, while desperate for Labour, it was an equally bad loss for Goodwin. Reform was competing for third place with the tactically voted against Labour, miles behind the winners. Not where an insurgent party needs to be.
    ... what?! It's a genuine disaster for Labour. For Reform, it's pretty good. They doubled their vote-share, established themselves as the main right-wing party with the Conservatives nowhere. In the end the left-wing vote was just a bit too big in this particular constituency, and the vote split wasn't marginal enough anyway.

    Their expectation management wasn't great and the reaction since the result deeply immature, and frankly a bit racist - do they really expect Muslims to vote for Reform? "Sectarian voting" is as much a result of their rhetoric than anything else. But their actual votes? Not bad at all, and they reflect that these ethereal previous non-voters are, actually, heading to the polling stations.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 55,377
    rottenborough said:

    Oh dear.

    Sharon Graham accuses Lab leadership of paying too much attention to their "rich mates".

    Heidi Alexender responds by saying she only has a few rich mates and she knocks on a lot of doors in Swindon each weekend.

    Today BBC4

    Credit to her for accepting the poison chalice of the media round. Is she the Cleverley of the PLP?
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 63,565
    Absolutely dire for the two main parties.

    But also very bad indeed for the Lib Dems, who have failed to capitalise on the collapse of the two parties who (barring the Coalition) have held power since World War II, and Your Party, who have spent so much time trying to fight each other they were unable to take advantage of a historic opportunity.

    Meanwhile, the left wing lunatics and the latest Faragian vehicle are doing very well indeed.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 19,077
    Eabhal said:

    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    It's a repeat of Caerphilly. A not-Labour party can win big against Reform in a Labour seat. Tactical voting works, but you can only have one target, which is Reform in this case, I think.

    How this plays out across the very large Labour estate, I'm not sure, but it doesn't look good for Labour.

    Should add, while desperate for Labour, it was an equally bad loss for Goodwin. Reform was competing for third place with the tactically voted against Labour, miles behind the winners. Not where an insurgent party needs to be.
    ... what?! It's a genuine disaster for Labour. For Reform, it's pretty good. They doubled their vote-share, established themselves as the main right-wing party with the Conservatives nowhere. In the end the left-wing vote was just a bit too big in this particular constituency, and the vote split wasn't marginal enough anyway.

    Their expectation management wasn't great and the reaction since the result deeply immature, and frankly a bit racist - do they really expect Muslims to vote for Reform? "Sectarian voting" is as much a result of their rhetoric than anything else. But their actual votes? Not bad at all, and they reflect that these ethereal previous non-voters are, actually, heading to the polling stations.
    Turnout was basically the same as at the general election. That doesn’t immediately suggest previous non-voters turning up.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 21,722
    IanB2 said:

    TheValiant said:

    How does a country that uses First Past the Post as its system, somehow manage to end up with 5 party politics?

    Our system has protected the two main parties when many other countries have seen old parties swept away - but there's a tipping point and it's now working to help voters wipe them out!
    Mr and Mrs Voter are pissed off with governments almost everywhere. Some of that is that governments everywhere are failing politically and morally, but some of it is because we think we're entitled to more than we're getting.

    Different people identify different baddies (billionaires, immigrants, corrupt politicians), but that's very secondary. It's always someone else's fault.

    Hence radical left and right squeezing out moderate left and right. And FPTP handles that sort of setup very badly. It's not an original insight, but we've ended up.with continental European politics without the buffers against chaos that continental European electoral systems provide. I don't want the next election to be "Ref or Green, pick a side" but...
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 8,786
    maxh said:

    Thoughts on G&D:

    1.Impressively large Green win. In the febrility of our politics it's easy to forget how unprecedented this is for the Greens - they are a party that fought for decades to win one parliamentary seat, and haven't had a profile like this ever. My hope is that this profile gets them more scrutiny of their economic policies, which is their greatest weakness in my view.

    2. On the other hand this is not the existential disaster for the main parties that some are claiming. A by-election is not a GE, and voters are indulging in protest voting to some extent. Labour clearly have no safe seats at the moment, nor do the Tories, but with competent leaders that could merely mean they have to actively win every seat by having a narrative that the public want to hear (as both the Greens and Reform do at present). Whether they do this or not is up to them.

    3. Reform performed as expected I'd say - not brilliantly, not a disaster for them. However, with our overly simplistic media narratives I wouldn't be surprised if the 'unstoppable' narrative becomes 'stoppable'. Given it was a protest-y atmosphere, one might have expected them to draw more of the Lab vote away as the Greens clearly did. They hoovered up the Tory vote nicely.

    4. The stereotyping of 'the Muslim vote' is unhelpful. We are a democracy. Just as leave voters should be respected for voting with their hearts in the Brexit referendum, any voter in G&D should be respected for voting for the party they believed can best serve Britain and the wider world. If as TSE says, that leads a Muslim voter to vote for a gay white Jew, this is a good thing, not a bad thing. Far better than not voting.

    On point 3, if Reform are smart the way they will play this in the coming weeks is “we are in a battle of ideas with the Greens.” It is not “stolen election bla bla sectarian voting.” Initial indications suggest they’ve gone for the latter (the lazy route, which betrays Farage’s weakness).
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 7,955
    Morris_Dancer said:

    Absolutely dire for the two main parties.

    But also very bad indeed for the Lib Dems, who have failed to capitalise on the collapse of the two parties who (barring the Coalition) have held power since World War II, and Your Party, who have spent so much time trying to fight each other they were unable to take advantage of a historic opportunity.

    Meanwhile, the left wing lunatics and the latest Faragian vehicle are doing very well indeed.

    Advance lost to OMLRP though
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 19,077
    Morris_Dancer said:

    Absolutely dire for the two main parties.

    But also very bad indeed for the Lib Dems, who have failed to capitalise on the collapse of the two parties who (barring the Coalition) have held power since World War II, and Your Party, who have spent so much time trying to fight each other they were unable to take advantage of a historic opportunity.

    Meanwhile, the left wing lunatics and the latest Faragian vehicle are doing very well indeed.

    LibDems either do brilliantly or terribly at by-elections. G&D was clearly not fertile ground for the party. We were last at the general election with 4%.
  • DopermeanDopermean Posts: 2,389
    SandyRentool said:

    I agree with everything TSE says in the header.

    This was the worst possible result for Labour.

    The worst possible result for Labour would have been a Reform win, an exultant Farage (and media) and Labour swerving even further to the right in pursuit of the prodigal Reform (former Labour) voter, discarding even more of their supporters.

    It is going to be difficult for the media to portray this as a good result for Reform and their anti-migrant and anti net-zero policies. Labour need to wake-up, promote and deliver on the policies they ran on, particularly the Green transition.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 126,546
    Disappointed nobody has picked up on my subtle play on words in the headline.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 13,517
    edited 8:41AM
    bondegezou said:

    Eabhal said:

    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    It's a repeat of Caerphilly. A not-Labour party can win big against Reform in a Labour seat. Tactical voting works, but you can only have one target, which is Reform in this case, I think.

    How this plays out across the very large Labour estate, I'm not sure, but it doesn't look good for Labour.

    Should add, while desperate for Labour, it was an equally bad loss for Goodwin. Reform was competing for third place with the tactically voted against Labour, miles behind the winners. Not where an insurgent party needs to be.
    ... what?! It's a genuine disaster for Labour. For Reform, it's pretty good. They doubled their vote-share, established themselves as the main right-wing party with the Conservatives nowhere. In the end the left-wing vote was just a bit too big in this particular constituency, and the vote split wasn't marginal enough anyway.

    Their expectation management wasn't great and the reaction since the result deeply immature, and frankly a bit racist - do they really expect Muslims to vote for Reform? "Sectarian voting" is as much a result of their rhetoric than anything else. But their actual votes? Not bad at all, and they reflect that these ethereal previous non-voters are, actually, heading to the polling stations.
    Turnout was basically the same as at the general election. That doesn’t immediately suggest previous non-voters turning up.
    We can't know unless we get some detailed post-election polling. My suspicion is that a large chunk of the Reform and Green vote are previous non-voters, and a large number of previous Labour voters didn't vote at all.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 54,422
    Prof Curtis will be analysing the by-election result with the Today R4 team, after the programme ends, on the "live news" section of BBC sounds at or shortly after 9am
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 126,546
    Anyhoo, now that Goodwin has lost, I made an agreement with a long term lurker to never use that that Farage photo ever again.
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 8,786
    bondegezou said:

    Morris_Dancer said:

    Absolutely dire for the two main parties.

    But also very bad indeed for the Lib Dems, who have failed to capitalise on the collapse of the two parties who (barring the Coalition) have held power since World War II, and Your Party, who have spent so much time trying to fight each other they were unable to take advantage of a historic opportunity.

    Meanwhile, the left wing lunatics and the latest Faragian vehicle are doing very well indeed.

    LibDems either do brilliantly or terribly at by-elections. G&D was clearly not fertile ground for the party. We were last at the general election with 4%.
    It’s not fertile ground for them now, but given the history of sizeable LD protest votes in seats of this profile (see for instance the post-Iraq war years) it must be a little concerning to see the party eclipsed as the natural protest vote in contests of this type. Clearly their focus lies on the shires and semi-rural formerly Tory seats now, but twas not always thus.

    The danger is the LDs become a bit passé.

  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 42,595
    TheScreamingEagles said:

    Disappointed nobody has picked up on my subtle play on words in the headline.

    You should have tried a pun on a candidate's name instead
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 101,460
    BatteryCorrectHorse said:

    LostPassword said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    williamglenn said:

    viewcode said:

    viewcode said:

    viewcode said:

    4:28 returning officer on stage

    Greens win
    Green 14k, Reform 10k, Labour 9k
    Gorton and Denton by-election result:

    GRN: 40.7% (+27.5)
    REF: 28.7% (+14.7)
    LAB: 25.4% (-25.3)
    CON: 1.9% (-6.0)
    LDEM: 1.8% (-2.1)

    Green GAIN from Labour.
    I am not convinced that backing Tories for most seats is the correct conclusion from that poll.

    Is that the Tories worst byelection petformance since dinosaurs walked over Gorton and Denton?
    Doing some further sums, and with a pretty similar turnout to the GE I think this fair.

    I think it fair to assume that the 6% who switched away from the Tories nearly all went to Reform, so 3/4 GE 24 voters, over and above their worst GE result in 2 centuries. Badenoch is staring into the abyss.

    Which also means that 8.7% of the electorate switched from Lab to Reform, around 1/7 of the Lab GE 24 vote, while Lab lost more than twice that to the Greens.
    You can't apply vote changes from a by-election across the country like that to any useful end. By-election swings are typically much larger, not least because the intense campaigning generally turbocharges tactical voting.

    You would expect the view changes to be different in a seat where the Tories were first or second at GE2024.

    Badenoch has pulled the Tory polling up from its nadir. There's a long way to go to recover the ground lost since the last GE, but I think they are a lot less doomed than they appeared to be six months ago.
    Am I the only person thinking she’s doing quite a good job?

    Her solution for tuition fees is not a good one however she astutely gave the attention to the issue of tuition fees and has charted a course that isn’t going after pensioners. Something I have been calling for, for years.

    There’s a space for a Tory Party that would do very well with the let’s say 25-45 age bracket. She’s made the first attempt at speaking to them.

    They need to do away with their NIMBYism streak next.
    If they stop being nimbys their support will halve immediately.

    She may be ok, but the party is on life support. It'll survive to 2029 (though she won't) but it's 50/50 if they merge fully with Reform or a rump remains.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 101,460
    Stuartinromford said:

    IanB2 said:

    TheValiant said:

    How does a country that uses First Past the Post as its system, somehow manage to end up with 5 party politics?

    Our system has protected the two main parties when many other countries have seen old parties swept away - but there's a tipping point and it's now working to help voters wipe them out!
    Mr and Mrs Voter are pissed off with governments almost everywhere. Some of that is that governments everywhere are failing politically and morally, but some of it is because we think we're entitled to more than we're getting.

    Different people identify different baddies (billionaires, immigrants, corrupt politicians), but that's very secondary. It's always someone else's fault.

    Hence radical left and right squeezing out moderate left and right. And FPTP handles that sort of setup very badly. It's not an original insight, but we've ended up.with continental European politics without the buffers against chaos that continental European electoral systems provide. I don't want the next election to be "Ref or Green, pick a side" but...
    We seem to be transitioning to the more radical parties like NI did. Great.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 19,077
    numbertwelve said:

    maxh said:

    Thoughts on G&D:

    1.Impressively large Green win. In the febrility of our politics it's easy to forget how unprecedented this is for the Greens - they are a party that fought for decades to win one parliamentary seat, and haven't had a profile like this ever. My hope is that this profile gets them more scrutiny of their economic policies, which is their greatest weakness in my view.

    2. On the other hand this is not the existential disaster for the main parties that some are claiming. A by-election is not a GE, and voters are indulging in protest voting to some extent. Labour clearly have no safe seats at the moment, nor do the Tories, but with competent leaders that could merely mean they have to actively win every seat by having a narrative that the public want to hear (as both the Greens and Reform do at present). Whether they do this or not is up to them.

    3. Reform performed as expected I'd say - not brilliantly, not a disaster for them. However, with our overly simplistic media narratives I wouldn't be surprised if the 'unstoppable' narrative becomes 'stoppable'. Given it was a protest-y atmosphere, one might have expected them to draw more of the Lab vote away as the Greens clearly did. They hoovered up the Tory vote nicely.

    4. The stereotyping of 'the Muslim vote' is unhelpful. We are a democracy. Just as leave voters should be respected for voting with their hearts in the Brexit referendum, any voter in G&D should be respected for voting for the party they believed can best serve Britain and the wider world. If as TSE says, that leads a Muslim voter to vote for a gay white Jew, this is a good thing, not a bad thing. Far better than not voting.

    On point 3, if Reform are smart the way they will play this in the coming weeks is “we are in a battle of ideas with the Greens.” It is not “stolen election bla bla sectarian voting.” Initial indications suggest they’ve gone for the latter (the lazy route, which betrays Farage’s weakness).
    Reform going on about Muslims voting isn’t about winning Gorton & Denton-type seats next time, it’s about scaring voters in the vast majority of seats with very few Muslim voters that there’s a big evil threat out there.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 60,162
    TheScreamingEagles said:

    Disappointed nobody has picked up on my subtle play on words in the headline.

    If you were to start making *subtle* plays on words, you’d be congratulated for it and not need to try and draw attention yourself.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 19,077
    Eabhal said:

    bondegezou said:

    Eabhal said:

    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    It's a repeat of Caerphilly. A not-Labour party can win big against Reform in a Labour seat. Tactical voting works, but you can only have one target, which is Reform in this case, I think.

    How this plays out across the very large Labour estate, I'm not sure, but it doesn't look good for Labour.

    Should add, while desperate for Labour, it was an equally bad loss for Goodwin. Reform was competing for third place with the tactically voted against Labour, miles behind the winners. Not where an insurgent party needs to be.
    ... what?! It's a genuine disaster for Labour. For Reform, it's pretty good. They doubled their vote-share, established themselves as the main right-wing party with the Conservatives nowhere. In the end the left-wing vote was just a bit too big in this particular constituency, and the vote split wasn't marginal enough anyway.

    Their expectation management wasn't great and the reaction since the result deeply immature, and frankly a bit racist - do they really expect Muslims to vote for Reform? "Sectarian voting" is as much a result of their rhetoric than anything else. But their actual votes? Not bad at all, and they reflect that these ethereal previous non-voters are, actually, heading to the polling stations.
    Turnout was basically the same as at the general election. That doesn’t immediately suggest previous non-voters turning up.
    We can't know unless we get some detailed post-election polling. My suspicion is that a large chunk of the Reform and Green vote are previous non-voters, and a large number of previous Labour voters didn't vote at all.
    Sure, that might be true. I don’t know.

    We sometimes comment now on issues polling, Reform voters are an outlier compared to supporters of all the other parties. But you also see in surveys that non-voters are the big outlier. I suspect it’s always easier to get voters to change party than to get non-voters to the voting booth.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 42,595
    He really does look like the guy at the end of Legally Blonde

    https://bsky.app/profile/leesavage.bsky.social/post/3mftcgn44fc2s
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 60,162
    Foxy said:

    Stereotomy said:

    Goodwin's whinging comes across as pathetic. Did he expect Muslims to vote for a party that demonises them? The only thing that would have happened if more people had stayed with Labour is his party would have been pushed to third place.

    I am a bit suspicious of these "family voting" allegations. If they were not drawn to the attention of the polling station staff (who meticululously apply the rules in my experience) then how are these allegations to be investigated or substantiated?
    The role of the observers is to observe, not to interfere.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 134,355
    Morris_Dancer said:

    Absolutely dire for the two main parties.

    But also very bad indeed for the Lib Dems, who have failed to capitalise on the collapse of the two parties who (barring the Coalition) have held power since World War II, and Your Party, who have spent so much time trying to fight each other they were unable to take advantage of a historic opportunity.

    Meanwhile, the left wing lunatics and the latest Faragian vehicle are doing very well indeed.

    No Gail's or Waitrose in Gorton and Denton, I am afraid it simply is not posh enough to vote LD now.

    Charles Kennedy's LDs could have won it but most of those voters now back the Greens, the LDs now are largely made up of anti Brexit voters who voted for Cameron or Clegg in 2015
  • El_CapitanoEl_Capitano Posts: 4,262
    Morris_Dancer said:

    Absolutely dire for the two main parties.

    But also very bad indeed for the Lib Dems, who have failed to capitalise on the collapse of the two parties who (barring the Coalition) have held power since World War II, and Your Party, who have spent so much time trying to fight each other they were unable to take advantage of a historic opportunity.

    Meanwhile, the left wing lunatics and the latest Faragian vehicle are doing very well indeed.

    I dunno. It strikes me as a moderately useful result for the Lib Dems, in that there's now a potential ally for them winning seats they wouldn't have fought anyway. Suburban/rural constituencies with a Gail's can vote Lib Dem, and urban constituencies full of graduates can vote Green. I'd be interested to see how many Lib Dem/Green battles there might be, but I suspect the answer is "not many".

    Certainly here in Oxfordshire it makes it pretty clear that, at the next election, the Greens need to concentrate on winning Oxford East while the Lib Dems need to concentrate on winning Banbury.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 54,422
    bondegezou said:

    Morris_Dancer said:

    Absolutely dire for the two main parties.

    But also very bad indeed for the Lib Dems, who have failed to capitalise on the collapse of the two parties who (barring the Coalition) have held power since World War II, and Your Party, who have spent so much time trying to fight each other they were unable to take advantage of a historic opportunity.

    Meanwhile, the left wing lunatics and the latest Faragian vehicle are doing very well indeed.

    LibDems either do brilliantly or terribly at by-elections. G&D was clearly not fertile ground for the party. We were last at the general election with 4%.
    The LDs are now essentially boxed in mostly to the Home Counties areas where the Greens aren't established. Had last night's by-election been in, say, East Grinstead, they'd have played the role that the Greens just did, with Reform coming in second, just the same.
  • DopermeanDopermean Posts: 2,389
    kle4 said:

    BatteryCorrectHorse said:

    LostPassword said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    williamglenn said:

    viewcode said:

    viewcode said:

    viewcode said:

    4:28 returning officer on stage

    Greens win
    Green 14k, Reform 10k, Labour 9k
    Gorton and Denton by-election result:

    GRN: 40.7% (+27.5)
    REF: 28.7% (+14.7)
    LAB: 25.4% (-25.3)
    CON: 1.9% (-6.0)
    LDEM: 1.8% (-2.1)

    Green GAIN from Labour.
    I am not convinced that backing Tories for most seats is the correct conclusion from that poll.

    Is that the Tories worst byelection petformance since dinosaurs walked over Gorton and Denton?
    Doing some further sums, and with a pretty similar turnout to the GE I think this fair.

    I think it fair to assume that the 6% who switched away from the Tories nearly all went to Reform, so 3/4 GE 24 voters, over and above their worst GE result in 2 centuries. Badenoch is staring into the abyss.

    Which also means that 8.7% of the electorate switched from Lab to Reform, around 1/7 of the Lab GE 24 vote, while Lab lost more than twice that to the Greens.
    You can't apply vote changes from a by-election across the country like that to any useful end. By-election swings are typically much larger, not least because the intense campaigning generally turbocharges tactical voting.

    You would expect the view changes to be different in a seat where the Tories were first or second at GE2024.

    Badenoch has pulled the Tory polling up from its nadir. There's a long way to go to recover the ground lost since the last GE, but I think they are a lot less doomed than they appeared to be six months ago.
    Am I the only person thinking she’s doing quite a good job?

    Her solution for tuition fees is not a good one however she astutely gave the attention to the issue of tuition fees and has charted a course that isn’t going after pensioners. Something I have been calling for, for years.

    There’s a space for a Tory Party that would do very well with the let’s say 25-45 age bracket. She’s made the first attempt at speaking to them.

    They need to do away with their NIMBYism streak next.
    If they stop being nimbys their support will halve immediately.

    She may be ok, but the party is on life support. It'll survive to 2029 (though she won't) but it's 50/50 if they merge fully with Reform or a rump remains.
    If the 25-45 Plan 2 generation vote for the Party that introduced Plan 2 tuition fees then you'd have to question whether they should have been accepted for University
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 16,708
    In the GE 2024 the G and D split was: left 78%, right 22%. Yesterday the split was left 68%, right 32%.

    I always thought Greens would win (bookies have paid up, thank you, putting me 77p ahead of them for 2026, a record.) Looking at the figures, Reform were never going to win. There was an early expectation that they could win by splitting the left vote. Even if the Lab/Green vote had split exactly equally (33 each), Reform would still have lost.

    In this election left v right equalled Reform v Not Reform (ie Tories didn't exist).

    Maths anoraks might like to let us know whether the 'right' vote going up by +40% (22-32) in a very left seat means Reform's national ceiling is quite low 30s, or whether it means that the left vote is going to be beaten by the right everywhere that is currently fairly evenly balanced.

    While my guess is that we have seen peak Reform, the evidence OTOH is that both the 'right' is alive and kicking, and OTOH, the Tories are not. It is deeply puzzling.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 55,377
    numbertwelve said:

    bondegezou said:

    Morris_Dancer said:

    Absolutely dire for the two main parties.

    But also very bad indeed for the Lib Dems, who have failed to capitalise on the collapse of the two parties who (barring the Coalition) have held power since World War II, and Your Party, who have spent so much time trying to fight each other they were unable to take advantage of a historic opportunity.

    Meanwhile, the left wing lunatics and the latest Faragian vehicle are doing very well indeed.

    LibDems either do brilliantly or terribly at by-elections. G&D was clearly not fertile ground for the party. We were last at the general election with 4%.
    It’s not fertile ground for them now, but given the history of sizeable LD protest votes in seats of this profile (see for instance the post-Iraq war years) it must be a little concerning to see the party eclipsed as the natural protest vote in contests of this type. Clearly their focus lies on the shires and semi-rural formerly Tory seats now, but twas not always thus.

    The danger is the LDs become a bit passé.

    No, the way that 5 (or more in Scotland and Wales) party politics plays out in a country wedded to FPTP elections is that each party wins in different places. LDs will continue to do well in the yellow belt across Southern England and be the main opponent of Tories and Reform there. Tories willl retreat to prosperous Shires. Neither will be competitive elsewhere.

    I wonder if Reform will continue to be so inefficiently distributed vote wise. It was their Achillies Heel in July 24, and was yesterday too. Labour may fall into the same trap with Greens snapping up their previously "safe seats". That Starmer win of wide but shallow support is vulnerable to the same result as Reform.

  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 35,292
    El_Capitano said:

    Morris_Dancer said:

    Absolutely dire for the two main parties.

    But also very bad indeed for the Lib Dems, who have failed to capitalise on the collapse of the two parties who (barring the Coalition) have held power since World War II, and Your Party, who have spent so much time trying to fight each other they were unable to take advantage of a historic opportunity.

    Meanwhile, the left wing lunatics and the latest Faragian vehicle are doing very well indeed.

    I dunno. It strikes me as a moderately useful result for the Lib Dems, in that there's now a potential ally for them winning seats they wouldn't have fought anyway. Suburban/rural constituencies with a Gail's can vote Lib Dem, and urban constituencies full of graduates can vote Green. I'd be interested to see how many Lib Dem/Green battles there might be, but I suspect the answer is "not many".

    Certainly here in Oxfordshire it makes it pretty clear that, at the next election, the Greens need to concentrate on winning Oxford East while the Lib Dems need to concentrate on winning Banbury.
    Ed Davey needs to go. Or at least needs to have a good think. LibDems have lost their NOTA badge to Reform and the Greens.

    But meanwhile they have 70-ish MPs who have made sod all difference in the Commons. They have replaced the SNP as our third party so Ed Davey has two PMQs a week, yet is still best known for falling in the water; oh, and last week he wanted to sue President Trump. 70 MPs and still running to be president of the students union.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 15,231
    Scott_xP said:

    He really does look like the guy at the end of Legally Blonde

    https://bsky.app/profile/leesavage.bsky.social/post/3mftcgn44fc2s

    If I had to have a 'job' job I think that is the one I would hate the most, after being editor of The Spectator.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 55,377
    Dopermean said:

    kle4 said:

    BatteryCorrectHorse said:

    LostPassword said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    williamglenn said:

    viewcode said:

    viewcode said:

    viewcode said:

    4:28 returning officer on stage

    Greens win
    Green 14k, Reform 10k, Labour 9k
    Gorton and Denton by-election result:

    GRN: 40.7% (+27.5)
    REF: 28.7% (+14.7)
    LAB: 25.4% (-25.3)
    CON: 1.9% (-6.0)
    LDEM: 1.8% (-2.1)

    Green GAIN from Labour.
    I am not convinced that backing Tories for most seats is the correct conclusion from that poll.

    Is that the Tories worst byelection petformance since dinosaurs walked over Gorton and Denton?
    Doing some further sums, and with a pretty similar turnout to the GE I think this fair.

    I think it fair to assume that the 6% who switched away from the Tories nearly all went to Reform, so 3/4 GE 24 voters, over and above their worst GE result in 2 centuries. Badenoch is staring into the abyss.

    Which also means that 8.7% of the electorate switched from Lab to Reform, around 1/7 of the Lab GE 24 vote, while Lab lost more than twice that to the Greens.
    You can't apply vote changes from a by-election across the country like that to any useful end. By-election swings are typically much larger, not least because the intense campaigning generally turbocharges tactical voting.

    You would expect the view changes to be different in a seat where the Tories were first or second at GE2024.

    Badenoch has pulled the Tory polling up from its nadir. There's a long way to go to recover the ground lost since the last GE, but I think they are a lot less doomed than they appeared to be six months ago.
    Am I the only person thinking she’s doing quite a good job?

    Her solution for tuition fees is not a good one however she astutely gave the attention to the issue of tuition fees and has charted a course that isn’t going after pensioners. Something I have been calling for, for years.

    There’s a space for a Tory Party that would do very well with the let’s say 25-45 age bracket. She’s made the first attempt at speaking to them.

    They need to do away with their NIMBYism streak next.
    If they stop being nimbys their support will halve immediately.

    She may be ok, but the party is on life support. It'll survive to 2029 (though she won't) but it's 50/50 if they merge fully with Reform or a rump remains.
    If the 25-45 Plan 2 generation vote for the Party that introduced Plan 2 tuition fees then you'd have to question whether they should have been accepted for University
    I don't think that suggestion from Badenoch can compete with the Green Party proposing to abolish tuition fees.

    https://greenparty.org.uk/about/our-manifesto/a-fairer-greener-education-system/
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