Election night result rumours that turned out to be BS

[rivers10]

Mar 1, 2018 14:49:27 GMT Andrew_S said:

Not really an election night mistake, but when the Tories lost Cheltenham in 1992 a lot of people like Darcus Howe came on TV shows to say how the Tories had lost "one of their safest seats" because of racism. They hadn't bothered to look at the results over the years in the constituency to see that it had never been a safe seat for the Conservatives and the Liberals had been very strong there for a long time.

That's classic media over embellishment, they do it all the time, describing marginals as safe seats or safe seats as marginals so the predicted or not very surprising result seems astonishing.

A great example was in the 2010 GE when David Dimbleby was interviewing Dr Evan Harris just after he lost his seat of Oxford W and Abingdon, he started by having a go at Dr Harris with the usual "how have you managed to lose a Lib Dem safe seat? Was it your views on abortion and euthanasia?" despite Harris's majority only being 13% which is fairly marginal.

In the same interview Dimbleby goes on to ask Dr Harris about the wider picture for the Lib Dem's and proceeds to point out that the Libs are having a awful night cos they've failed to win any of the Newcastle seats all three of which where "very marginal key Lib Dem targets"

Newcastle North Majority 17%

Newcastle East Majority 21%

Newcastle Central Majority 23%

Only a British journalist could describe Oxford West as a safe seat and Newcastle central as a marginal in the same interview...

[pragmaticidealist]

Interesting that there weren't (to my recollection) any rumours regarding Putney last year prior to the actual declaration, whereas there were mutterings that IDS was in bother. Putney turned out to be a more marginal result than Chingford & Woodford Green.

[Lord Twaddleford]

Feb 28, 2018 20:24:55 GMT @barnabymarder said:

We also heard that Labour had taken Aberconwy last year.

I didn't hear that rumour exactly myself, but I did hear that it was incredibly close with a realistic chance of flipping. Nonetheless, the fact that it was that close was actually rather a major surprise to me. It's certainly got us stepping up our game here, but unfortunately it's also got the Tories upping theirs.

Now, whilst it would be nice to turn Aberconwy red at the next General Election, personally I think it'd be even better to flip its Assembly counterpart in 2021. As resident of said constituency, it has been something of a point of exasperation for me that in recent years this area has chosen to elect some epic arseholes to Westminster and Cardiff Bay, but whilst Guto Bebb MP has difficulty with concepts of politeness when communicating with constituents, I'd argue that Janet Finch-Saunders AM is an even more odious character, and if I could only get rid of one of the two, it'd be the latter. Of course, with recent Welsh polling just having been published, this is not looking to be an easy task, despite Aberconwy being (on paper) the easiest Labour gain at the next round of Assembly elections.

[Devil Wincarnate]

Mar 1, 2018 14:49:27 GMT Andrew_S said:

Not really an election night mistake, but when the Tories lost Cheltenham in 1992 a lot of people like Darcus Howe came on TV shows to say how the Tories had lost "one of their safest seats" because of racism. They hadn't bothered to look at the results over the years in the constituency to see that it had never been a safe seat for the Conservatives and the Liberals had been very strong there for a long time.

Was it definitely Darcus Howe, or was it Robert Elms?

[sirbenjamin]

Mar 1, 2018 14:20:56 GMT Andrew_S said:

Mar 1, 2018 11:37:37 GMT The Bishop said:

A classic example of this - referred to on here before - was in the early minutes just after polls closed in 1997; David Dimbleby remarked in a totally casual way that Mitcham & Morden (a Tory ultra-marginal) was looking like a "close call".

(NARRATOR'S VOICE: it wasn't)

The Tories in the seat were apparently saying they thought Angela Rumbold had increased her majority against the national trend. How they came to that conclusion is one of the biggest mysteries of any election campaign.

It was very strange, though as it was the first GE campaign I'd ever been involved in I didn't have a clue what to expect.

With 20 years worth of hindsight, it's now clear just how complacent and in denial the M&M Tories were. They were convinced that Angela had an immense personal vote, that Siobhan McDonagh always came up short because people didn't trust her, and that the days of the area voting Labour were well in the past. The operation on the day was very poorly organised, though everyone had a jolly old time drinking tea and eating cake and sitting around chatting. Endless chatting.

And, lest we forget, I embarrassed myself badly at the count, got chucked out and then woke up the following afternoon, covered in red wine vomit.

Precious memories.

[timmullen1]

I think one thing that confused the issue more than usual last year was that the BBC tried to use their exit poll to forecast individual seats, hence it missed Labour’s gain of Vale of Clwyd, hold of Wrexham, because the exit poll underestimated Labour in Wales.

IIRC they did flag up Putney pretty early, but correctly suggested Battersea was the more likely Wandsworth seat to switch.

[timmullen1]

Mar 1, 2018 17:38:06 GMT @barnabymarder said:

Mar 1, 2018 11:37:37 GMT The Bishop said:

A classic example of this - referred to on here before - was in the early minutes just after polls closed in 1997; David Dimbleby remarked in a totally casual way that Mitcham & Morden (a Tory ultra-marginal) was looking like a "close call".

(NARRATOR'S VOICE: it wasn't)

I was working in that constituency that day. The Tories visibly gave up during the afternoon and were never seriously in the running to hold the seat. So that was total BS of course by Dimbleby.

Not really because the reporter at the count was saying the Tories didn’t recognise the exit poll and that Dame Angela’s personal vote might see her hang on, whilst Labour were, according to said reporter, saying only that it was close. Now both Conservative and Labour might have been feeding that reporter a load of b.s., but Dimbleby can’t really be blamed for merely repeating what the people in the constituency itself were telling the BBC; in fact he expresses immense cynicism at the Tory position and hinted that he thought they were being fed b.s. from both sides.

[hullenedge]

BBC 1979 and the opinion poll in Derby North, 10 mins in:-

[swanarcadian]

Mar 1, 2018 18:27:38 GMT hullenedge said:

BBC 1979 and the opinion poll in Derby North, 10 mins in:-

Labour did actually hold Derby North, of course, despite losing the general election.  There were quite a few target seats the Conservatives didn't gain that year, but they were offset by results like Hertford & Stevenage and Birmingham Northfield.

[greenchristian]

Mar 1, 2018 13:45:49 GMT East Anglian Lefty said:

Mar 1, 2018 10:14:31 GMT @strinity said:

Laura Kuenssberg was reporting several from "sources" last year that turned out not to be true, though they were usually pretty tight in the end eg Northampton North and the Milton Keynes seats.

Of course, if we had progressive booth level reporting like most other civilised countries, we wouldn't need chinese whisper rumours to be filtered through ignorant hacks in the first place, we could just get the data from source and probably be more authoritative on here than they are on the TV news.

Yes, but if we did have box data then political reporters would seize on the first (and hence most likely to be unrepresentative) boxes, draw hugely overreaching conclusions from them and spread even more misinformation. They'd probably stop being so bad after a couple of elections, but it'd take a while.

Perhaps it would work better if the first time we have box data it is only released after the constituency result. As politicians who have seen box tallies of previous years and know the patch we can interpret box data (For example, I knew from the first box I saw in 2017 that Geoffrey Robinson had almost certainly increased his majority), but the media will have nothing to compare it to the first time the data is available to them. That would mean that there's at least a chance of them making semi-sensible interpretations to start with.

[Deleted]

The Mitcham & Morden example must be the most ridiculous! I also remember hearing that "Tories would have to rethink the way they do canvassing as they expected an increased majority!".

Although I did hear "recount in Lewisham, Deptford" in the 1983 programme and "recount in Blaby".

Endless chatter about Nick Clegg being "in trouble" in 2015.

Gordon was projected as a Tory hold in 1997. Largely due to dodgy nationals.

[Deleted]

A lot to be said for just going on random Twitter rumours to keep viewers watching!

"We're getting reports on Twitter" or even just "there is talk..."

[timmullen1]

Mar 1, 2018 17:52:21 GMT @barnabymarder said:

fair enough Tim. But the canvassing returns clearly indicated that the Tories were in deep doo-doo, not just in shallow doo-doo, and I never doubted that the seat would fall easily, particularly when I observed how the Tories were behaving on polling day. They abandoned the polling station where I was working at about 3 pm (though it was clearly a good Labour area to be fair) but we saw very few of their knockers-up. If Labour were saying it was close, that was indeed bullshit.

I think, if you watch the coverage, there was a general message gone out to all marginals from the Labour Party, to downplay expectations. Nevertheless the BBC, and Dimbleby in particular, won’t have had access to any canvass returns so can only really go on the information being conveyed to him which was “Labour thinks it’s going to be close, Tories think they might hang on”. Notably people talking to Peter Kellner were obviously more honest as after the first half dozen results he ran through a whole list of seats were either Labour were “confident” or the Tories “despondent”, a lot of which were completely different to the messages being conveyed by reporters at those counts.

[Andrew_S]

Mar 1, 2018 19:11:15 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

The Mitcham & Morden example must be the most ridiculous! I also remember hearing that "Tories would have to rethink the way they do canvassing as they expected an increased majority!".

Although I did hear "recount in Lewisham, Deptford" in the 1983 programme and "recount in Blaby".

Endless chatter about Nick Clegg being "in trouble" in 2015.

Gordon was projected as a Tory hold in 1997. Largely due to dodgy nationals.

The recount in Blaby was to determine whether Labour had reached 12.5% and saved their deposit.

[hullenedge]

Mar 1, 2018 18:44:59 GMT swanarcadian said:

Mar 1, 2018 18:27:38 GMT hullenedge said:

BBC 1979 and the opinion poll in Derby North, 10 mins in:-

Labour did actually hold Derby North, of course, despite losing the general election.  There were quite a few target seats the Conservatives didn't gain that year, but they were offset by results like Hertford & Stevenage and Birmingham Northfield.

The BBC commissioned the poll and then miscalculated the swing (or didn't check the Oct '74 figures). Definitely not 0.7% to Labour.

[timmullen1]

Mar 1, 2018 20:41:38 GMT Andrew_S said:

Mar 1, 2018 19:11:15 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

The Mitcham & Morden example must be the most ridiculous! I also remember hearing that "Tories would have to rethink the way they do canvassing as they expected an increased majority!".

Although I did hear "recount in Lewisham, Deptford" in the 1983 programme and "recount in Blaby".

Endless chatter about Nick Clegg being "in trouble" in 2015.

Gordon was projected as a Tory hold in 1997. Largely due to dodgy nationals.

The recount in Blaby was to determine whether Labour had reached 12.5% and saved their deposit.

Gordon had undergone boundary changes which made it nominally Conservative, and Malcolm Bruce had only survived in 1992 by 274; I think his 16% swing was high even by LD standards even in 1997.

[timrollpickering]

IIRC there was a bit of dispute in 1997 about just what Gordon's notional result was - rural Scottish seats being some of the worst for determining this. The 1997 result suggests the notionals probably got the defending party right but the majority way over.

[Deleted]

In 1997 Gordon was projected as a Conservative hold and ended up being a Lib Dem win.

In 2017 Gordon was projected a s Lib Dem gain and ended up being a Conservative gain.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Elizabeth Shields was 90 the other day - the oldest former Liberal/Lib Dem MP.

A lot of people expected her to hold on due to name recognition, decent anti-Tory votes in the towns, and village activism. It sometimes works - Alan Beith managed it in Berwick.

[timmullen1]

Mar 1, 2018 23:00:19 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

In 1997 Gordon was projected as a Conservative hold and ended up being a Lib Dem win.

At one point it was the last chunk of Scottish blue on Peter Snow’s map, which was obviously slow to update as Malcolm Bruce’s win had already gone across the straplines on the bottom of the screen.