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Post by The Old TomCat on Dec 28, 2014 15:05:12 GMT
Obviously at the moment we are all discussing opinions. But in the early 1970's when I was based in Bahrain with the army and had plenty of time to spare we all played the board game RISK. Since then I had been fascinated on how close seemingly random roll of the dice imitates actual politics. In RISK as has happened in UK politics, it is mainly a battle between two major armies with a 3rd minor side. Every now and then the 3rd side grows and grows until it is unable to sustain itself and implodes to its smaller former self and the other two armies take over their territory. My analysis is that the LibDems will implode and the Conservatives and Labour will take over many of their seats. And why I think the Conservatives will do okay is because since 1997, the LibDems have been voting tactically, usually against the Conservatives. Labour might not be able to gain as much their former supporters as would be supposed because it has already been given. And with the same rational I suspect that the LibDems will not be wiped out but retain more than few seats where they are embedded.
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Post by timokane on Dec 28, 2014 18:46:01 GMT
Difficult question to answer at present time. Unlike GE1979 or GE1997 when it was a foregone conclusion that the Conservatives and Labour would regain power, it seems that GE2015 will be a closer fought time. My personal observation is that both Conservative and Labour will increase the number of seats held, almost exclusively from the LibDems. The present popularity for the Greens and Ukip will fall away in May. Okay Ukip will take more Conservative votes than Labour votes but the Conservatives have learnt to live with Ukip/Referendum Party while the high flying SNP is a new challenge to Labour. So yes I truly believe the Conservatives will win with a small outright majority. I'm not sure why you think the Conservatives will fail to lose significant numbers of seats to Labour in May. In 2010 they were about 7% ahead of Labour in the popular vote. To stay still they'll need a little more than that because Labour has lost about 15 points in Scotand. This equates to a loss of just over 1% GB wide. However since it is the SNP and not the Conservatives they are competing with in Scotland this loss is no gain to the Tories. So to stand still against Labour they'll need about 8% lead over Labour. The latest polls show them slightly behind so to get back to where they were they need to gain more than eight percent over Labour. Since as The Bishop points out governing parties tend to fall back during the election campaign itself they actually need a double digit gain over Labour in the next three months to avoid losing seats to Labour. I just can't see that happening. Actually agree with Devonian on this one. You have to eradicate the poll deficit before you can even think of addressing increased support. It helps if you ask yourself why would anyone who did not vote Tory in 2010 vote for them in 2015 ? I don't see a game changing move being made by either Labour or Tory. The difference is labour can do it without a game changer.
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john07
Labour & Co-operative
Posts: 14,640
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Post by john07 on Dec 28, 2014 20:37:41 GMT
Are you confident that the Conservatives will remain in office after the election? Difficult question to answer at present time. Unlike GE1979 or GE1997 when it was a foregone conclusion that the Conservatives and Labour would regain power, it seems that GE2015 will be a closer fought time. My personal observation is that both Conservative and Labour will increase the number of seats held, almost exclusively from the LibDems. The present popularity for the Greens and Ukip will fall away in May. Okay Ukip will take more Conservative votes than Labour votes but the Conservatives have learnt to live with Ukip/Referendum Party while the high flying SNP is a new challenge to Labour. The high flying SNP is a new challenge to Labour? What a ridiculous statement! Labour have had to deal with the SNP since the 1960s. Leaving aside the fact that the SNP have been in office at Holyrood since 2007, three years before the last General Election, the SNP were flying high in the middle to late 1970s and threatened to take any seat that came up in a by-election. The mood changed when Donald Dewar held Garscadden and Hugh Robertson beat Margo MacDonald in Hamilton in 1978.
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Post by The Old TomCat on Dec 28, 2014 22:49:30 GMT
Difficult question to answer at present time. Unlike GE1979 or GE1997 when it was a foregone conclusion that the Conservatives and Labour would regain power, it seems that GE2015 will be a closer fought time. My personal observation is that both Conservative and Labour will increase the number of seats held, almost exclusively from the LibDems. The present popularity for the Greens and Ukip will fall away in May. Okay Ukip will take more Conservative votes than Labour votes but the Conservatives have learnt to live with Ukip/Referendum Party while the high flying SNP is a new challenge to Labour. The high flying SNP is a new challenge to Labour? What a ridiculous statement! Labour have had to deal with the SNP since the 1960s. Leaving aside the fact that the SNP have been in office at Holyrood since 2007, three years before the last General Election, the SNP were flying high in the middle to late 1970s and threatened to take any seat that came up in a by-election. The mood changed when Donald Dewar held Garscadden and Hugh Robertson beat Margo MacDonald in Hamilton in 1978. John, statistics support my statement. The SNP have never secured more than 22% at any general election nor had more than 11 MPs. In May they are expected to decimate Labour and secure more than half the available seats in the region. In GE2010 the SNP secured 19.9% of the votes and only 6 seats. Yes the SNP have been Labour's opponents for decades but for most of the time little more than an irritant. I stand by my previous statement that the SNP has evolved into a serious challenge to Labour.
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Post by manchesterman on Dec 28, 2014 22:53:59 GMT
I think the argument here is more about your use of the word "NEW challenge". Clearly they arent a new challenge, but they are likely to present a greater threat to the number of Scottish Labour MPs returned than anyone has for decades...
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Post by The Old TomCat on Dec 28, 2014 23:08:11 GMT
I think the argument here is more about your use of the word "NEW challenge". Clearly they arent a new challenge, but they are likely to present a greater threat to the number of Scottish Labour MPs returned than anyone has for decades... Fair enough. I'm happy to go with that.
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Sibboleth
Labour
'Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.'
Posts: 15,371
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Post by Sibboleth on Dec 29, 2014 0:03:41 GMT
The SNP have never secured more than 22% at any general election nor had more than 11 MPs. Untrue; they polled 30.4% in October 1974.
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Post by The Old TomCat on Dec 29, 2014 0:29:58 GMT
The SNP have never secured more than 22% at any general election nor had more than 11 MPs. Untrue; they polled 30.4% in October 1974. Apologies you are correct. But they only managed 11 seats out of 71 and it dropped to 17.3% at next election in 1979. Polls for next election are suggesting that they will manage both better % and number of seats. Whether that is another fleeting high mark remains to be seen. But for 2015 it is grim reading for Labour and will probably prevent them becoming UK governing party.
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Post by Devonian on Dec 29, 2014 0:51:07 GMT
Untrue; they polled 30.4% in October 1974. Apologies you are correct. But they only managed 11 seats out of 71 and it dropped to 17.3% at next election in 1979. Polls for next election are suggesting that they will manage both better % and number of seats. Whether that is another fleeting high mark remains to be seen. But for 2015 it is grim reading for Labour and will probably prevent them becoming UK governing party. The one thing that SNP gains won't do is prevent Labour from going into government. SNP have promised to back Labour over Conservatives in the event of a hung Parliament and it would be electoral suicide for them not to keep that promise.
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Post by carlton43 on Dec 29, 2014 2:32:00 GMT
Apologies you are correct. But they only managed 11 seats out of 71 and it dropped to 17.3% at next election in 1979. Polls for next election are suggesting that they will manage both better % and number of seats. Whether that is another fleeting high mark remains to be seen. But for 2015 it is grim reading for Labour and will probably prevent them becoming UK governing party. The one thing that SNP gains won't do is prevent Labour from going into government. SNP have promised to back Labour over Conservatives in the event of a hung Parliament and it would be electoral suicide for them not to keep that promise. I don't think a failure to back Labour would be 'electoral suicide', but support for the Conservatives would be.
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Post by Devonian on Dec 29, 2014 8:38:45 GMT
The one thing that SNP gains won't do is prevent Labour from going into government. SNP have promised to back Labour over Conservatives in the event of a hung Parliament and it would be electoral suicide for them not to keep that promise. I don't think a failure to back Labour would be 'electoral suicide', but support for the Conservatives would be. Well quite. Since in the event of a hung parliament the SNP would have to back one party or the other to be the governing party the SNP would be forced to back Labour as the only way to block the Tories from forming a government.
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Post by timokane on Dec 29, 2014 9:13:51 GMT
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Post by The Old TomCat on Dec 29, 2014 10:20:50 GMT
I have been giving a bit of thought overnight to what The Bishop and Devonia implied that the ruling party's fortunes fall back nearer to general elections. I think the opposite and the GE1992 springs to mind. The polls, bookies and pundits all agreed that Labour would win that year's general election. If memory serves me right there was only one poll showing a Conservative win and that was dismissed as a rogue poll. Neil Kinnock even had his victory rally in Sheffield days before the vote. For that and other reasons I don't think there will be a coalition after May. The LibDems will not have enough MPs to be considered as a realistic partner; Ukip 's support always, without fail, falls at General Elections and they will probably secure less than a handful of seats; The Greens are really a protest party that will pick up 'non-of-the-above' voters but few to none seats; the SNP have unofficially committed themselves not to vote on only English issues which leaves them out of the equation. GE2015 will therefore be a straight contest between Labour and the Conservatives. Labour have about a 20 seat advantage because of voting distribution
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Post by The Old TomCat on Dec 29, 2014 10:29:44 GMT
I too would not be surprised if the forecasts of an SNP whitewash fails to materialise. It seems that the Scots vote differently at General Election than they do for Hollyrood. Yes Labour could retain more seats than is currently forecast, but it is sure that both the LibDems and Conservatives will struggle.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Dec 29, 2014 11:25:59 GMT
I have been giving a bit of thought overnight to what The Bishop and Devonia implied that the ruling party's fortunes fall back nearer to general elections. I think the opposite and the GE1992 springs to mind. The polls, bookies and pundits all agreed that Labour would win that year's general election. If memory serves me right there was only one poll showing a Conservative win and that was dismissed as a rogue poll. False memories are coming in there. The consensus of the polls and pundits in 1992 was that it would be a hung Parliament, with Labour likely to be the largest party. All the individual polls are here: ukpollingreport.co.uk/historical-polls/voting-intention-1987-1992That's party propaganda. The Sheffield Rally was a campaign rally intended to enthuse the party workers and also to provide TV pictures showing mass support for Labour. It was not organised as a victory rally. It was little mentioned in the last week of the campaign, but then seized on after the result as an explanation for the last minute swing. In reality it's unlikely to have been anything to do with it, as a late swing was not the main reason the result was out of line with the opinion polls. Labour got more votes than the Conservatives at the EP elections in May.
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Post by thirdchill on Dec 29, 2014 11:36:02 GMT
Labour got more votes than the Conservatives at the EP elections in May. It was pretty close though, with labour's very good performance in london being the main reason for them being ahead.
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Post by The Old TomCat on Dec 29, 2014 11:50:44 GMT
David, reference Sheffield: "Although Labour's internal polls at the time suggested the event had little effect on the level of support for the party, media commentators, and some prominent Labour politicians, thought the rally came over as "triumphalist" to television viewers of subsequent news programmes." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_Rally
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Post by The Old TomCat on Dec 29, 2014 11:55:04 GMT
Labour got more votes than the Conservatives at the EP elections in May. It was pretty close though, with labour's very good performance in london being the main reason for them being ahead. Also the Conservatives lost many votes to Ukip as a protest vote. Those people will be voting Conservative at GE2015.
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Post by carlton43 on Dec 29, 2014 12:16:15 GMT
I don't think a failure to back Labour would be 'electoral suicide', but support for the Conservatives would be. Well quite. Since in the event of a hung parliament the SNP would have to back one party or the other to be the governing party the SNP would be forced to back Labour as the only way to block the Tories from forming a government. But do they? They run to an entirely Scottish agenda and a bit of mayhem in 'England' plays to their objective of "Let's get out of this mess. Look at the state they have got into?" One must face the fact that they are and have for long been disjuncted from the Greater Britain and they are poor to weak on the economics. They will not see the need to prioritize economic stability with immediate formal coalition, pacts or even Confidence and Supply, because they have 'power' in Scotland already and just want to go the extra mile. Disruption in 'England' plays to the double strength of showing the Scots why it is good to leave and leaves 'England' beached in rough waters and perhaps more anxious to cut loose from the troublesome northerners?
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john07
Labour & Co-operative
Posts: 14,640
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Post by john07 on Dec 29, 2014 12:23:39 GMT
Untrue; they polled 30.4% in October 1974. Apologies you are correct. But they only managed 11 seats out of 71 and it dropped to 17.3% at next election in 1979. Polls for next election are suggesting that they will manage both better % and number of seats. Whether that is another fleeting high mark remains to be seen. But for 2015 it is grim reading for Labour and will probably prevent them becoming UK governing party. You are (deliberately?) missing the point that many were predicting that the SNP would sweep the board in Scotland at the next General Election at various times in the mid to late 1970s prior to the Garscadden by-election. There was even a split in the Labour Party with Jim Sillars, John Robertson, Alex Neil, along with others such as Jim McAllion, Maria Fyfe moved to a new Scottish Labour Party. The SNP have been winning seats in by-elections since 1945 and in General Elections since 1970. To call this a new threat is daft. UKIP are yet to win a seat in a General Election. The Referendum Party were a bad joke based on Jimmy Goldsmith's money. That makes your comparison especially absurd.
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