Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 19, 2019 20:33:45 GMT
The obvious one is Sheffield, Hallam. The Labour went vote down by 6%!
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Post by finsobruce on Jan 19, 2019 20:33:46 GMT
I’d put Colchester in the same category as a seat that is moving in Labour’s direction having not been competitive for a long time. Colchester's only Labour MP Charles Smith (1945-50), later a minister in the House of Lords was the co-editor of a 1938 colletion of Fabian essays called "Democratic Sweden". |
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Post by finsobruce on Jan 19, 2019 20:50:17 GMT
I’d put Colchester in the same category as a seat that is moving in Labour’s direction having not been competitive for a long time. Southport? Also not off topic either as Labour's '97 underperformance there was exactly for the right reasons i.e. effective tactical voting for the LDs, which arguably didn't happen in other places, their overperformance you could say, denied several LD gains I'm sure. Southport is a different case to Colchester as Labour were never very close to winning , their best result before 2017 being (bizarrely) in 1918 when the Tory/National majority was just under 9,000 with no Liberal candidate.
In 1966 (with a Liberal candidate) a certain John Prescott got the majority down to around 9,500. But the Liberals had come back to win the seat between the world wars and moved into second place again as early as 1959, having failed to field a candidate in 1955 - though present in 1945, 1950 and 1951.Labour had failed to stand in the debacle of 1931 and the Liberals gave 1935 a miss.
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Post by manchesterman on Jan 19, 2019 22:10:06 GMT
And of course there's something else that those two seats have in common. In 1997 they both had a new Labour candidate after the sitting MP stood down, disputes within the local CLP, and the new candidate was from an ethnic group which was not numerous in the constituency. I think he was talking about GG (later than 1997 of course) |
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Jan 19, 2019 22:13:36 GMT
That person is not spoken of in polite company.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 19, 2019 22:30:24 GMT
Ayr possibly? Considering Phil Gallie's majority was so small, their 14.6% majority, although comfortable enough seems a little underwhelming.
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Post by greenhert on Jan 19, 2019 23:23:15 GMT
The obvious one is Sheffield, Hallam. The Labour went vote down by 6%! This was down to a particularly heavy squeeze by the Liberal Democrats' Richard Allan against an unpopular Conservative MP, Sir Irvine Patnick. The same thing happened in Harrogate that year against ex-Chancellor Norman Lamont.
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Post by manchesterman on Jan 19, 2019 23:30:44 GMT
1997 was the first election,IIRC where tactical voting was a BIG issue. There were I would say several dozen seats taken from The Tories where LD voters voted Labour and vice versa, depending on the seat.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Jan 19, 2019 23:35:04 GMT
1997 was the first election,IIRC where tactical voting was a BIG issue. There were I would say several dozen seats taken from The Tories where LD voters voted Labour and vice versa, depending on the seat. It was talked about a great deal from the mid 1980s, and in 1987 it operated in Scotland between Liberal Democrats and SNP - leading to each making several gains from the Conservatives. |
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Post by manchesterman on Jan 19, 2019 23:37:20 GMT
1997 was the first election,IIRC where tactical voting was a BIG issue. There were I would say several dozen seats taken from The Tories where LD voters voted Labour and vice versa, depending on the seat. It was talked about a great deal from the mid 1980s, and in 1987 it operated in Scotland between Liberal Democrats and SNP - leading to each making several gains from the Conservatives. I agree it was discussed a lot amongst those politically engaged,and it happened all the time in by-elections. But this was the 1st national (UK) election where I recall it happening in A LOT of seats |
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Jan 20, 2019 11:43:50 GMT
Actually it can be argued that tactical voting took off at the 1992 GE, it is one reason why the Tory majority then was lower than UNS would suggest.
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Post by pragmaticidealist on Jan 20, 2019 12:31:06 GMT
Batley & Spen, very much a Lab-Con marginal, had a swing of under 8%, likely due to Elizabeth Peacock's personal vote. It tends to be quite a stubborn seat in general as far as swing goes. Of course it's a seat that has gained notoriety for far more tragic reasons recently.
Chesterfield saw Tony Benn returned with a reduced majority, albeit the Liberal Democrats were his main challenger. IIRC he noted in his diaries that someone he canvassed told him of their intention to vote Tory on the basis that neither he nor Dennis Skinner were leading Labour.
Birmingham Edgbaston had a swing of 'only' 10%, somewhat on the low side for a marginal seat. Quite a few seats in the West Midlands didn't swing anywhere near as dramatically as much of London (for example) did.
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myth11
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Post by myth11 on Jan 20, 2019 13:34:44 GMT
Hi, After a bit of perusing of some of the safest seats in the country, a few of them appear to have actually had a slight swing against Labour in them in 1997 or small reduction in percentage vote (though it was monumental anyway), so wondering if people have any insights into why that might be, local issues, new/unpopular candidates, etc? Two examples being Manchester Central and Liverpool Riverside which I can't think of why. It is harder to see in other places (e.g. Knowsley) due to boundary changes, but if the reason is 'they were already monumentally safe and couldn't get any safer', that wasn't the case in Bootle where the vote went from 75% to 83%. I am aware of special cases in Bradford and Bethnal Green due to Conservative candidates being of an ethnic minority common in the area and the Labour candidate not being so, are there any other examples? There will have been some working class Old Labour voters who were put off by Blair's New Labour brand in some of those northern strongholds. That happened in a lot more in 2001 as i know at the time my coal mining plus ex coal mining relatives were expecting Nationalization and i guess this applied to the other former state owned industries too. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 20, 2019 13:39:49 GMT
2017 saw lower levels of tactical voting than the 2000s- note some of Labour's wins in England and several Tory gains in Scotland. The combined Conservative and Labour vote was the highest since 1979.
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sirbenjamin
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Post by sirbenjamin on Jan 21, 2019 0:44:20 GMT
Colchester, Rushcliffe and Watford all very concerning from a football perspective. And this in the aftermath of a couple of fairly poor elections for both us and the LDs.
At what point do the FA step in? (Answer: Never, because they don't really give a fuck about balance, fairness or representativeness)
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Harry Hayfield
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Post by Harry Hayfield on Jan 21, 2019 7:11:37 GMT
Smallest Headline Con to Lab swings at Election 1997:
Barnsley East and Mexborough: 3.10%
Ogmore: 3.80%
Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath: 4.64%
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Post by iainbhx on Jan 21, 2019 8:18:42 GMT
I think Aldridge Brownhills and Bromsgrove were 2 of the ‘least bad’ Conservative performances in that election. Labour would be pleased to get within 10000 of either now. I’d add Meriden to the list of seats that Labour probably should have won in 1997 given the national swing especially as there was no Conservative incumbent. Meriden was always going to be a turnout and registration battle between the two halves of the seat. |
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YL
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Post by YL on Jan 21, 2019 8:56:43 GMT
The obvious one is Sheffield, Hallam. The Labour went vote down by 6%! Some of that is due to boundary changes; Nether Edge, which was transferred to Central, was the only ward in the 1992 version of the constituency to vote Labour in the 1992 locals. The rest of it is obviously down to tactical voting. |
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Post by heslingtonian on Jan 21, 2019 8:59:56 GMT
I’d add Meriden to the list of seats that Labour probably should have won in 1997 given the national swing especially as there was no Conservative incumbent. Meriden was always going to be a turnout and registration battle between the two halves of the seat. True but given the fact that Labour gained nearby Warwick & Leamington (a much notionally stronger Conservative seat on its 1997 than its current boundaries) and Rugby & Kenilworth, they should have probably also picked up Meriden. |
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iain
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Post by iain on Jan 21, 2019 9:06:56 GMT
The obvious one is Sheffield, Hallam. The Labour went vote down by 6%! Some of that is due to boundary changes; Nether Edge, which was transferred to Central, was the only ward in the 1992 version of the constituency to vote Labour in the 1992 locals. The rest of it is obviously down to tactical voting. Nether Edge voted Lib Dem in 1992. |
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