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Post by yellowperil on Jun 15, 2018 0:45:39 GMT
I think we should remember the leaked LD canvass returns which got these figures so very nearly exactly right and which were scoffed at as impossible by certain people on here... the campaign wasn't nearly long enough to go from a lost deposit to winning, and just about everyone on the LD side thought that and said so. This was a one-off by election and I would accept that it tells us very little about any future general election, but it does indicate a certain softness in the Labour vote and almost certainly on the Brexit issue.
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Post by cherrycoffin on Jun 15, 2018 1:19:05 GMT
It entirely sure that’s accurate. They’ve got the Lib Dem’s down as winning Kensington and Vauxhall for a start!
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Post by beesknee5 on Jun 15, 2018 6:40:29 GMT
. Wrong thread. Oops
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Post by No Offence Alan on Jun 15, 2018 6:42:54 GMT
If we counted our votes like America, then roughly 400-500 seats would be 'called' within about five minutes of the polls closing on general election nights. Much less fun. But look at all that lovely data we would have to play with afterwards.
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mboy
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Post by mboy on Jun 15, 2018 6:52:31 GMT
I think that's a cracking result, given what even the most optimistic Lib Dems were saying at the start of this thread (I predicted a Vauxhall result, which was not quite as good as this). I think it shows that we could beat Labour if a by election came up in one of our former urban seats.
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Post by andrew111 on Jun 15, 2018 7:09:09 GMT
I don't think many scoffed at the LD canvassing returns. What was being scoffed at was its masquereading as a poll. There was a lot of scoffing near the start of this thread when a few of us suggested the result might be "similar to Vauxhall" I suspect the votes cast on the day were quite a bit closer, but the large proportion of postal votes these days suppresses the late momentum swings that we have seen in past by-elections. In terms of significance, this is an unusually big swing against an opposition party in mid term and shows there is a significant proportion of Labour voters who wanted to send a message to the Labour leadership, probably in most cases about Brexit...Most of them would not do that in a General Election, but it makes the fence a little more uncomfortable for Labour.
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Post by archaeologist on Jun 15, 2018 7:09:10 GMT
Looking at the poor turnout, I can't really get excited about the result. We could only persuade 8 out of every 100 electors to come and vote for us. Labour could only get 17. A great triumph for democracy!
% of electorate voting - Lab 16.7 LDm 8.2 Con 4.8 Green 1.2 UKIP 0.6 Other 1.9
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Post by yellowperil on Jun 15, 2018 7:25:23 GMT
Looking at the poor turnout, I can't really get excited about the result. We could only persuade 8 out of every 100 electors to come and vote for us. Labour could only get 17. A great triumph for democracy! % of electorate voting - Lab 16.7 LDm 8.2 Con 4.8 Green 1.2 UKIP 0.6 Other 1.9 I'm inclined to agree with you about turnout , which is pathetic- I had been working on 40% as my working hypothesis, and even that would have been poor. But another 7% on the turnout would have been interesting if that had been predominantly a Lib Dem vote, as well it might have been if these were none of the above abstainers at this stage.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2018 7:33:55 GMT
The Lib Dem vote went up by 20% but they still don't look anywhere close to winning. In Witney in November 2016 the Lib Dem vote went up by 23% and the Lib Dems looked like potential challengers for the seat, but then their vote fell back by 10% at the general election eight months later and they finished in third. There was a seat next door which was a more likely Lib Dem prospect though, and the eventual result showed that concentrating some of that effort in to Witney would have been a bad idea. But I'd say that whether we can then win the seat in question isn't the be-all-and-end-all of these things, and with seats like this, not really the reason why we put so much effort in. A large swing, combined with good media coverage, can sometimes lead to a small nationwide swing, and boosts campaigning morale. Allegedly, the party almost always gets more money in pre by-election donation drives than they actually spend on the election, so there's that as well.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2018 7:37:31 GMT
I'm impressed. With the wide field of fringe candidates, you'd expect that there was a very high chance that they wouldn't come dead last, as per this tweet. And yet...
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2018 7:43:35 GMT
Impressive 9% swing from Labour to the Loonies.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2018 8:12:48 GMT
I don't think many scoffed at the LD canvassing returns. What was being scoffed at was its masquereading as a poll. There was a lot of scoffing near the start of this thread when a few of us suggested the result might be "similar to Vauxhall" I suspect the votes cast on the day were quite a bit closer, but the large proportion of postal votes these days suppresses the late momentum swings that we have seen in past by-elections. In terms of significance, this is an unusually big swing against an opposition party in mid term and shows there is a significant proportion of Labour voters who wanted to send a message to the Labour leadership, probably in most cases about Brexit...Most of them would not do that in a General Election, but it makes the fence a little more uncomfortable for Labour. is it? Labour almost lost a seat to the SNP during the early 90s. They lost 2 london seats to the Alliance during the 80s. They lost Bradford West and almost lost Heywood and Middleton under Ed
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2018 8:15:05 GMT
I don't think many scoffed at the LD canvassing returns. What was being scoffed at was its masquereading as a poll. There was a lot of scoffing near the start of this thread when a few of us suggested the result might be "similar to Vauxhall" I suspect the votes cast on the day were quite a bit closer, but the large proportion of postal votes these days suppresses the late momentum swings that we have seen in past by-elections. In terms of significance, this is an unusually big swing against an opposition party in mid term and shows there is a significant proportion of Labour voters who wanted to send a message to the Labour leadership, probably in most cases about Brexit...Most of them would not do that in a General Election, but it makes the fence a little more uncomfortable for Labour. I have looked upthread and can't find much evidence of said scoffing. We have merseymike noting that the Vauxhall result was Hoey influenced, but that's it really. I was certainly not at all surprised to wake up to this result, it's clear the LDs put in a big effort here and their anti Brexit message combined with the coalition effect further wearing off clearly gave them potential. I agree with mboy that a by election in somewhere like N Southwark/Bermondsey would be interesting.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2018 8:18:52 GMT
There was a lot of scoffing near the start of this thread when a few of us suggested the result might be "similar to Vauxhall" I suspect the votes cast on the day were quite a bit closer, but the large proportion of postal votes these days suppresses the late momentum swings that we have seen in past by-elections. In terms of significance, this is an unusually big swing against an opposition party in mid term and shows there is a significant proportion of Labour voters who wanted to send a message to the Labour leadership, probably in most cases about Brexit...Most of them would not do that in a General Election, but it makes the fence a little more uncomfortable for Labour. is it? Labour almost lost a seat to the SNP during the early 90s. They lost 2 london seats to the Alliance during the 80s. They lost Bradford West and almost lost Heywood and Middleton under Ed There was also a big swing against Labour in the Rotherham by election in 1994, just before the death of John Smith, and of course Smith's Monklands East seat saw a big swing to the SNP although local factors were the main driver there.
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Post by andrew111 on Jun 15, 2018 8:20:38 GMT
The other thing I would say is that Labour made a very sensible choice of candidate after all the fuss. Someone who could pull in a personal local vote and also managed to steer a course between loyalty to Corbyn and the Single Market. Mostly by avoiding the media and public meetings of course! That was helped by the Evening Standard, who also contributed to the low turnout by giving much more prominence to the WEP than the Lib Dems. This morning their report on the by-election managed to say that the Tories came above the Lib Dems in 2017 without saying they did not this time! I guess they will be forced to give the actual result at some point. The political agenda of the Editor is evidently all pervading (stop any Lib Dem revival while promoting Labour splits and taking the odd swipe at Theresa for personal reasons)
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jun 15, 2018 8:21:52 GMT
There was a lot of scoffing near the start of this thread when a few of us suggested the result might be "similar to Vauxhall" I suspect the votes cast on the day were quite a bit closer, but the large proportion of postal votes these days suppresses the late momentum swings that we have seen in past by-elections. In terms of significance, this is an unusually big swing against an opposition party in mid term and shows there is a significant proportion of Labour voters who wanted to send a message to the Labour leadership, probably in most cases about Brexit...Most of them would not do that in a General Election, but it makes the fence a little more uncomfortable for Labour. is it? Labour almost lost a seat to the SNP during the early 90s. They lost 2 london seats to the Alliance during the 80s. They lost Bradford West and almost lost Heywood and Middleton under Ed They did lose a seat to the SNP in the late 80s Many here will also remember a by-election in a neighbouring seat in 2006, Bromley & Chislehurst which the Lib Dems almost gained from the Conservatives. Several Lib Dems on sites like this were then talking up the seat as being a marginal going into the 2010 election (spoiler alert - it wasn't)
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Post by Old Fashioned Leftie on Jun 15, 2018 8:29:41 GMT
I presume Janet Daby will be sworn in early next week in time to attend the "meaningful vote" amendment debate. Makes the numbers just a little more interesting.
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Post by beastofbedfordshire on Jun 15, 2018 8:35:21 GMT
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Post by andrew111 on Jun 15, 2018 8:52:37 GMT
I think the fact that people have to dredge up fights against the SNP, against the Alliance in the 1980s, George Galloway, and UKIP in their heyday rather makes my point which was "unusually large swing"
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2018 8:59:28 GMT
I think the fact that people have to dredge up fights against the SNP, against the Alliance in the 1980s, George Galloway, and UKIP in their heyday rather makes my point which was "unusually large swing" well the Alliance/Lib Dems and the SNP had become quite adept at by elections. Galloway and UKIP might be more unusual cases though the latter seem to replace the Lib Dems as the party of by elections during 2010-2015.
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