West Lancashire

[Deleted]

Lab 62.3% +10.2
Con 25.4% -10.9
RUK 4.4% +.1
LD 4.1% -.8
Grn 2.9% +.4
MRLP 0.9% +.9

[Deleted]

Feb 10, 2023 1:57:52 GMT manchesterman said:

I make the percentages:

LAB 62.14
CON 25.36
REF 4.39
LD 4.05
GRN 2.85
OMRLP 0.93

Strange, I have the same raw numbers but my spreadsheet gives slightly different percentages

[manchesterman]

This is actually a pretty good result for the Tories in the round. To get 5700 people to vote for this current government, with all it is inflicting on the country right now, on a cold February day in a strong Labour seat is pretty impressive. Sounds like the candidate was good or campaign was well organised. A -10% swing in the current climate is something the Tory party nationally can only dream of!

[manchesterman]

Feb 10, 2023 2:05:00 GMT @europeanlefty said:

Feb 10, 2023 1:57:52 GMT manchesterman said:

I make the percentages:

LAB 62.14
CON 25.36
REF 4.39
LD 4.05
GRN 2.85
OMRLP 0.93

Strange, I have the same raw numbers but my spreadsheet gives slightly different percentages

I used a good old fashioned calculator and pen and paper

[Deleted]

Feb 10, 2023 2:09:53 GMT manchesterman said:

This is actually a pretty good result for the Tories in the round. To get 5700 people to vote for this current government, with all it is inflicting on the country right now, on a cold February day in a strong Labour seat is pretty impressive. Sounds like the candidate was good or campaign was well organised. A -10% swing in the current climate is something the Tory party nationally can only dream of!

It is always possible that the Tories just didn't have that much further to fall here

[Deleted]

Feb 10, 2023 2:10:51 GMT manchesterman said:

Feb 10, 2023 2:05:00 GMT @europeanlefty said:

Strange, I have the same raw numbers but my spreadsheet gives slightly different percentages

I used a good old fashioned calculator and pen and paper

Ah, I always use spreadsheets. Don't trust myself to get it right otherwise!

Besides, an efficient, properly formatted, detailed spreadsheet is the closest one can get to true beauty....

[johnloony]

Sky News is contradicting itself by telling us that it’s a Labour majority of 8,321, despite giving the raw figures as above which would be a majority of 8,326.

Of course it doesn’t help that (a) Sky was late going to the declaration (b) the acoustics were appallingly bad and too echoey (c) the R.O. didn’t make any attempt to repeat or clarify the figures which were drowned out by cheering (d) the Sky News graphic on screen listed the top 5 candidates but not the OMRLP

[Clark]

Just waiting for Rintoul to come out and say what an awful result it is for Labour....

[Clark]

Feb 10, 2023 2:10:51 GMT manchesterman said:

Feb 10, 2023 2:05:00 GMT @europeanlefty said:

Strange, I have the same raw numbers but my spreadsheet gives slightly different percentages

I used a good old fashioned calculator and pen and paper

Yeah whatever the polls say, we all know the Tories are going to do "somewhat better" when it comes to an actual election.  This has generally happened throughout history.

[aargauer]

10.5% - that's distinctly underwhelming.

The tories were managing swings in the high teens in the fag end of the last labour government. I was certainly expecting more like 15% than 10% here. It's certainly out of kilter with predictions of the tories going down to 50 or so seats - more like the swing needed to have a majority of 1.

[ibfc]

[rockefeller]

Feb 10, 2023 6:25:58 GMT aargauer said:

10.5% - that's distinctly underwhelming.

The tories were managing swings in the high teens in the fag end of the last labour government. I was certainly expecting more like 15% than 10% here. It's certainly out of kilter with predictions of the tories going down to 50 or so seats - more like the swing needed to have a majority of 1.

Those polls are like the 1995 Gallup poll that gave Labour a 39% lead. The Tories may be heading for a 1997-style result, but West Lancashire is already safe Labour - not exactly Dudley West, SE Staffs or Wirral South in the 90s.

[batman]

It's not as bad a result for the Tories as some predicted, in fact it is fairly reasonable by most yardsticks. But I think Andrew Teale is right in his analysis; this is a very bifurcated seat, with quite considerable villagey safe Tory swathes that will always be resistant to Labour, but also including Skelmersdale which is monolithically Labour; and it will sometimes come down to turnout. The only relatively swing area of any consequence is Ormskirk and that is already much more Labour-inclined as a town than it used to be. Perhaps a swing of 17-18-19% was just too much to expect in an already pretty safe Labour seat

[Sibboleth]

You wouldn't really expect a very socially divided constituency in a part of the country that saw a less catastrophic result than typical for Labour at the last election to swing particularly hard: there's just a lot less room for it. What you can say, I suppose, is that it shows that the Conservative Party's absolute base vote (of which there's quite a lot here in places) is not melting away, but that's relatively scant consolation except when compared to the more extreme MRP projections.

[Pete Whitehead]

UNS swing



As discussed on the Stretford thread it flatters the Conservatives a bit because they start from a lower base (though not as low as there). I'll do another based on proportional swing (which used to be my preferred method). The Conservatives lost 30% of their 2019 vote share (which equates to something like a 13% swing nationally) which compares to 42% in both Chester and Stretford, so a marked improvement on those results, but for reasons discussed above that isn't all that noteworthy

[Harry Hayfield]

Feb 10, 2023 2:09:53 GMT manchesterman said:

This is actually a pretty good result for the Tories in the round. To get 5700 people to vote for this current government, with all it is inflicting on the country right now, on a cold February day in a strong Labour seat is pretty impressive. Sounds like the candidate was good or campaign was well organised. A -10% swing in the current climate is something the Tory party nationally can only dream of!

My opinion is that we are on course for a 1997 style result (10% swing from Con to Lab) however because of the result of the last election (Con lead of 12% = Con majority of 80) and the boundary changes, the best Labour can hope for is a small majority of around 10 and the best the Conservatives can hope for is Labour below 300 seats.

[LDCaerdydd]

2019 majority = 8,336
2023 majority = 8,326

[No Offence Alan]

Feb 10, 2023 2:05:00 GMT @europeanlefty said:

Feb 10, 2023 1:57:52 GMT manchesterman said:

I make the percentages:

LAB 62.14
CON 25.36
REF 4.39
LD 4.05
GRN 2.85
OMRLP 0.93

Strange, I have the same raw numbers but my spreadsheet gives slightly different percentages

Is one of you including spoilt ballots, and the other not?

[The Bishop]

Feb 10, 2023 6:25:58 GMT aargauer said:

10.5% - that's distinctly underwhelming.

The tories were managing swings in the high teens in the fag end of the last labour government. I was certainly expecting more like 15% than 10% here. It's certainly out of kilter with predictions of the tories going down to 50 or so seats - more like the swing needed to have a majority of 1.

Its almost exactly the same changes - and swing - as the Stretford and Urmston byelection at the end of last year. And the Tories are, if anything, in steeper long term decline there than they are here - where there is still a "genepool" vote for them in the rural areas (Reform might have taken a fair amount of that support in the right circumstances, but those obviously didn't materialise on this occasion) I bet the engagement in Skem was awful (more than usual, I mean) as well.

Its no coincidence too that the best of these three NW byelections for Labour (Chester) also saw the highest turnout.

[Pete Whitehead]

Proportional swing (that is to say Conservatives lose 30% of vote share everywhere, Labour increasing by a roughly corresponding amount)