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Post by No Offence Alan on Jan 21, 2022 13:49:37 GMT
Though again, postal votes. Is this the last Scottish council byelection before May? Yes - I think so. Yes - postal votes may have a role, but also unionism will provide the Scottish Conservatives with some insulation from the fallout of the Westminster shambles. I'm not sure May will be that bad for them up here... I am informed postal votes were 80% of the total turnout.
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Post by carlton43 on Jan 21, 2022 13:52:39 GMT
Well, I am not at all surprised at the Tory win here. Labour only won in 2015 because of a big UKIP vote, and the Yorkshire Party fish in the same pool as UKIP. Meanwhile Greens take a few Labour votes and it is a low turnout by-election where postal votes dominate. If I could be bothered with prediction competitions I would have forecast a Tory win, especially with the postal votes cast before the worst of current Tory woes.. This is the thing many are (in some cases deliberately) overlooking. How many of the votes in this one were actually postal votes? If so, the norm would have meant most of them being cast before the present scandal blew up (and the Tories only trailed Labour modestly in the polls) It is almost inconceivable that Labour did not carry this one comfortably on the day. But! They didn't!!
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The Bishop
Labour
Down With Factionalism!
Posts: 36,684
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Post by The Bishop on Jan 21, 2022 13:57:42 GMT
They didn't what?
Win overall - yes, I know. "Won" the votes cast in the last week - almost certainly.
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Post by minionofmidas on Jan 21, 2022 15:11:17 GMT
Are you saying the ballot paper messup is why Loughborough had a stronger Labour result? He's saying that most of the votes would have been postal votes and therefore cast a couple of weeks ago before the shit had hit the fan when polling was a lot closer yes, duh - Charnwood's postals were necessarily cast later however.
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Post by andrew111 on Jan 21, 2022 15:17:55 GMT
He's saying that most of the votes would have been postal votes and therefore cast a couple of weeks ago before the shit had hit the fan when polling was a lot closer yes, duh - Charnwood's postals were necessarily cast later however. Charnwood is a bit hard to interpret with minus 18% right wing populist votes replaced by 11% of Indy..
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Post by yellowperil on Jan 21, 2022 15:57:52 GMT
They didn't what? Win overall - yes, I know. "Won" the votes cast in the last week - almost certainly. Does anyone know the facts about this Selby election? There were only 447 votes cast in total for any candidate- it was miniscule. How many of them were PV s? I haven't heard any statement on that- but just suppose they were similar to the Scottish election where it has been suggested 80% were PVs - that would imply votes cast on the day of less than 100, and yes I agree with you that it is highly likely that a substantial majority of those were Labour votes, for all sorts of reasons, but it would be extremely doubtful if you could draw any conclusions from that. Maybe somebody in the know can tell me that the PV rate deep in Yorkshire was much lower than in Scotland and that really the number voting on the day was ...in the hundreds? Well maybe but I would be somewhat loath to make too much of it either way as a pointer to the mood of the nation.
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Sibboleth
Labour
'Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.'
Posts: 15,327
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Post by Sibboleth on Jan 21, 2022 16:31:41 GMT
I'm not entirely convinced that a local by-election with a comedy turnout in a ward of two thousand souls is necessarily worth all this agitation. Certainly looking for any wider meaning is a stretch given the margin - would the meaning be significantly different if a literal handful of voters had changed their minds? Demographically there's no obvious reason either: the sort of humdrum profile that doesn't automatically suggest anything, actually. I suppose back when the wider area was much more industrial during the peak years of Kellingley Colliery, the Selby Complex and all those power stations it might have had quite a different composition, but that was a while ago and so not really relevant. There seems to be a history of past councillors with strong personal appeals, although that's really common in wards made up of a number of villages wherever you go.
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Post by edinburghtory on Jan 21, 2022 17:23:47 GMT
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Post by timrollpickering on Jan 21, 2022 17:26:08 GMT
And yet the election system change campaigners incessantly insist that these systems are easy to understand...
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Merseymike
Independent
Posts: 39,206
Member is Online
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Post by Merseymike on Jan 21, 2022 17:56:08 GMT
And yet the election system change campaigners incessantly insist that these systems are easy to understand... I'm not personally in favour of STV but the problem is that it doesn't translate well to by elections with a single candidate vacancy
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Post by finsobruce on Jan 21, 2022 18:13:19 GMT
A large swing to Labour and the highest Labour vote (as a %) that has ever been recorded in this ward. The Labour vote is actually higher than when we last held the ward in 2015. Bearing in mind that this is the kind of area that will have swung heavily to the Tories in 2019, not a bed result. Oh! It is very bed. Virtually chaise longue! If you can't win there this week you are an utter disgrace and a shambles. are you saying the bed is bunk?
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Post by gwynthegriff on Jan 21, 2022 18:15:42 GMT
They didn't what? Win overall - yes, I know. "Won" the votes cast in the last week - almost certainly. Does anyone know the facts about this Selby election? There were only 447 votes cast in total for any candidate- it was miniscule. How many of them were PV s? I haven't heard any statement on that- but just suppose they were similar to the Scottish election where it has been suggested 80% were PVs - that would imply votes cast on the day of less than 100, and yes I agree with you that it is highly likely that a substantial majority of those were Labour votes, for all sorts of reasons, but it would be extremely doubtful if you could draw any conclusions from that. Maybe somebody in the know can tell me that the PV rate deep in Yorkshire was much lower than in Scotland and that really the number voting on the day was ...in the hundreds? Well maybe but I would be somewhat loath to make too much of it either way as a pointer to the mood of the nation. I was surprised at our recent Neighbourhood Plan referendum that the split was 2:1 "on the day" to postals in a group of rural villages where I'd have expected a high proportion of postals. So maybe the preponderance of PVs isn't as high as we think? And perhaps it's the uncharacteristic ones that get attention?
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Smartie
Labour
Enter your message here...
Posts: 787
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Post by Smartie on Jan 21, 2022 18:18:07 GMT
🥱 change the record, you’re becoming boring with your delusional rants. This is not a rant but an observation. And I do not consider myself to be delusional about this. We are now 12-years into various forms of Conservative administrations and would expect Labour to be in the strong recovery seen by the Conservatives in 2009. Brexit and Covid have proved to be a challenge for the Conservatives for which they were ill-prepared and largely incompetent. The Johnson experience has been successful as to winning a GE and breaking an intolerable HOC log-jam hiatus, but in nothing else at all. The Johnson Conservatives have an incohate policy vacuum and are in an unholy mess of conflicting positions that make little sense to membership or electorate. Latterly the party management, the errors, the misstatements and the rule breaking of various sorts are demeaning, disappointing and very weakening. All that sets a perfect situation for an even half-competent Opposition to make huge strides and to hoover up anything even mildly marginal by a raft of by-election successes. From such successes Labour would expect to fall back in a GE campaign and hope to come out as good contender if not victor. But you persist is having a really dismal performance week-on-week, month-on-month and still failing to capitalize on the Conservative weakness. I am glad you are in denial over this very poor position. We are 18 months off Cameron’s position in 2009 I’m happy to wait another 18 months to see if Starmer is hoovering up votes in council by elections in mid 2023. Three completely different conservative governments Johnson’s broad church is entirely different from Cameron’s and May’s whereas Labour 97 to 09 was fairly homogenous. Worried - No. the wilderness years of Corbyn, the shell shock of losing Scotland impacted but we are bouncing back and I look forward with joy and anticipation to a Starmer led Labour Government.
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 13,678
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Post by J.G.Harston on Jan 21, 2022 19:33:33 GMT
And yet the election system change campaigners incessantly insist that these systems are easy to understand... Give them some credit, a lot of the Meeja don't understand the existing system in the rest of the country.
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Post by yellowperil on Jan 21, 2022 20:08:05 GMT
Does anyone know the facts about this Selby election? There were only 447 votes cast in total for any candidate- it was miniscule. How many of them were PV s? I haven't heard any statement on that- but just suppose they were similar to the Scottish election where it has been suggested 80% were PVs - that would imply votes cast on the day of less than 100, and yes I agree with you that it is highly likely that a substantial majority of those were Labour votes, for all sorts of reasons, but it would be extremely doubtful if you could draw any conclusions from that. Maybe somebody in the know can tell me that the PV rate deep in Yorkshire was much lower than in Scotland and that really the number voting on the day was ...in the hundreds? Well maybe but I would be somewhat loath to make too much of it either way as a pointer to the mood of the nation. I was surprised at our recent Neighbourhood Plan referendum that the split was 2:1 "on the day" to postals in a group of rural villages where I'd have expected a high proportion of postals. So maybe the preponderance of PVs isn't as high as we think? And perhaps it's the uncharacteristic ones that get attention? My point was that nobody can tell me what the split was in the Selby case and I have no idea whether it was largely PVs or largely on the day votes. As I said if it was like the Scottish by-election, that would mean an on the day vote of less than 100. If it was 2:1 on the day, as with your referendums, it would mean about 300 day votes. Either way it's pretty small beer.
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Post by andrew111 on Jan 21, 2022 21:30:33 GMT
And yet the election system change campaigners incessantly insist that these systems are easy to understand... I don't think the lack of understanding of a journalist on Edinburgh Live is much guide to the suitability of an electoral system. The important thing is that the voters just number as many candidates in order of preference as they care about. The next day they find out who won, and if their vote contributed to that even as a third preference, they feel it was worthwhile. Given that our world is jam packed with invitations to put things in order of preference, it is pretty easy for most voters to get used to it
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Post by andrew111 on Jan 21, 2022 21:37:51 GMT
And yet the election system change campaigners incessantly insist that these systems are easy to understand... I'm not personally in favour of STV but the problem is that it doesn't translate well to by elections with a single candidate vacancy It translates fine. The party with the most overall support gets an extra Councillor for a year or two. Not a big deal.
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The Bishop
Labour
Down With Factionalism!
Posts: 36,684
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Post by The Bishop on Jan 22, 2022 11:53:28 GMT
I'm not entirely convinced that a local by-election with a comedy turnout in a ward of two thousand souls is necessarily worth all this agitation. Certainly looking for any wider meaning is a stretch given the margin - would the meaning be significantly different if a literal handful of voters had changed their minds? The exchange in question - an unproductive one, I agree - was begun by somebody who waded onto this thread to say the result was a terrific disaster for Labour (seemingly unaware that not all the votes will have been cast on Thursday, to boot)
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Post by andrewteale on Jan 22, 2022 13:12:21 GMT
I'm not entirely convinced that a local by-election with a comedy turnout in a ward of two thousand souls is necessarily worth all this agitation. Certainly looking for any wider meaning is a stretch given the margin - would the meaning be significantly different if a literal handful of voters had changed their minds? Demographically there's no obvious reason either: the sort of humdrum profile that doesn't automatically suggest anything, actually. I suppose back when the wider area was much more industrial during the peak years of Kellingley Colliery, the Selby Complex and all those power stations it might have had quite a different composition, but that was a while ago and so not really relevant. There seems to be a history of past councillors with strong personal appeals, although that's really common in wards made up of a number of villages wherever you go. Another point to consider is that the industry has left the area with excellent road links to the cities of West Yorkshire (particularly Leeds), and the recent motorway construction has made Fairburn a far nicer and quieter place to live than it was 20 years ago. I'll be surprised if this area isn't going through pretty fast demographic change.
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Post by Peter Wilkinson on Jan 22, 2022 19:06:07 GMT
I'm not personally in favour of STV but the problem is that it doesn't translate well to by elections with a single candidate vacancy It translates fine. The party with the most overall support gets an extra Councillor for a year or two. Not a big deal. The problem, though, is that most people who support STV (or think they do) believe it to be a proportional system. You know it isn't. I know it isn't. But... A system where by-elections standardly return the candidate of the plurality party in the area, no matter what the party of the deceased or resigning representative, doesn't (at least at first sight) look either proportional or fair.
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