Woking

[maxque]

Apr 1, 2024 13:28:34 GMT graham said:

Apr 1, 2024 13:21:13 GMT maxque said:

Indeed. Conservatives won all seats in present day Surrey at every election but:
1906 (3 Liberals, 1 Conservative)
1945 (6 Conservatives, 1 Labour) (and that seat voted Labour thanks to including non-Surrey Ealing).
2001 (10 Conservatives, 1 Liberal Democrat)

But Ealing is nowhere near Surrey!

Indeed, it rather included the south of the current Hillingdon borough. No clue where Ealing came from in my head.

[batman]

Apr 1, 2024 10:34:02 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Apr 1, 2024 9:21:09 GMT batman said:

Runnymede & Weybridge is more likely to be Labour than LD. The LDs will primarily work elsewhere but there is a definite Labour presence in Egham & Englefield Green in particular. Spelthorne is probably likelier though. I wouldn't rule out a Labour win in Reigate altogether though it may be that the Tory majority has been artificially depressed by Blunt having a negative personal vote which will no longer be a factor

Englefield Green is moving into the Windsor seat to be replaced by Cobham and Oxshott. I think people are getting a bit silly about some of these seats, including those who are normally pretty level headed (on psephological issues in any case, even if not in terms of their broader political views )

thanks, I had forgotten that. In that case I withdraw what I said, it won't be a Labour gain, and IMHO not a Lib Dem one either

[batman]

Apr 1, 2024 13:40:01 GMT maxque said:

Apr 1, 2024 13:28:34 GMT graham said:

But Ealing is nowhere near Surrey!

Indeed, it rather included the south of the current Hillingdon borough. No clue where Ealing came from in my head.

more specifically it included all of Feltham, which is in Hounslow not Hillingdon

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Spelthorne is the only possible Labour target in Surrey, but even then it's a massive stretch. By contrast I'd say there are three seats the Liberal Democrats have a very good chance of winning:

Esher and Walton - 5%
Guildford - 6%
Woking - 17% but likely to be a lot easier in practice

And two more they would win if the Conservatives did collapse, both of which have notional Conservative leads of about 19%:

Dorking and Horley
Godalming and Ash

The remaining five seats are not worth fighting seriously as it might cause them to lose focus on more winnable targets and start with Conservative leads of 30% or more.

[batman]

I'm sure they'd want to have a go at Surrey Heath though after taking control of the council bearing in mind who the incumbent is. Will it actually work? That might be a different matter.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

I sense that previous attempts to target seats based on particular dislike for the incumbent MP have tended to backfire. Unless the MP has done something bad in their personal life, constituencies seem to take offence, as if they're being blamed for the sitting party's choice of candidate and for not agreeing with the attacking party's views about them.

[batman]

more often than not, yes. A particularly noteworthy example is the Liberal Democrats' ridiculous belief that they could beat Kate Hoey in Vauxhall in 2017. In fact she slightly increased her majority which was already over 20,000.

[stb12]

Apr 1, 2024 21:45:22 GMT batman said:

more often than not, yes. A particularly noteworthy example is the Liberal Democrats' ridiculous belief that they could beat Kate Hoey in Vauxhall in 2017. In fact she slightly increased her majority which was already over 20,000.

There was also their Tory decapitation strategy in 2005 that only succeeded in one seat

[bjornhattan]

Apr 1, 2024 20:16:49 GMT batman said:

I'm sure they'd want to have a go at Surrey Heath though after taking control of the council bearing in mind who the incumbent is. Will it actually work? That might be a different matter.

I think they'd struggle to win there - while the demographics aren't massively different to their other targets in Surrey on paper, the feel of the place is quite different. Camberley is certainly a middle class town (outwith the Old Dean estate) but it's not really a liberal one, and there are fewer graduates than in Guildford or Woking. There's also much more of a military influence; not quite as much as Aldershot and Farnborough but definitely noticeable around the place.

Voting history bears this out to an extent. The Conservatives have a consistent and deep strength in Surrey Heath - only once in the last fifty years have they failed to win 50% of the vote and quite often they have won 60% or more. The seat also voted Leave - this may not be directly relevant now we're eight years on from the referendum, but is another way in which it differs from other potential marginals in the county. Obviously the local election results were pretty convincing for the Lib Dems, and they will probably be able to benefit from a relatively strong Reform performance which could split the vote. But it's still a big ask.

[graham]

Apr 1, 2024 19:51:01 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Spelthorne is the only possible Labour target in Surrey, but even then it's a massive stretch. By contrast I'd say there are three seats the Liberal Democrats have a very good chance of winning:

Esher and Walton - 5%
Guildford - 6%
Woking - 17% but likely to be a lot easier in practice

And two more they would win if the Conservatives did collapse, both of which have notional Conservative leads of about 19%:

Dorking and Horley
Godalming and Ash

The remaining five seats are not worth fighting seriously as it might cause them to lose focus on more winnable targets and start with Conservative leads of 30% or more.

I have seen reports that Labour might fight Woking hard based on MRP surveys. I also suspect that LD hopes may be thwarted by much of 2019's tactical voting being reversed in the context of a rising Labour tide. Guildford looks a likely LD gain.

[bigfatron]

Despite Graham’s relentless assertions across multiple seats, the Lib Dems will fight their forty top targets hard, including Woking, and will start as the clear alternative in this seat to the Tories.

Hopefully both us and Labour will avoid the fatuous lunacy of 2019 where at times both be parties seemed more intent on stopping the other from winning genuine targets than they were from winning their own…

[matureleft]

Apr 2, 2024 7:13:13 GMT bigfatron said:

Despite Graham’s relentless assertions across multiple seats, the Lib Dems will fight their forty top targets hard, including Woking, and will start as the clear alternative in this seat to the Tories.

Hopefully both us and Labour will avoid the fatuous lunacy of 2019 where at times both be parties seemed more intent on stopping the other from winning genuine targets than they were from winning their own…

There are signs of common sense, but local parties can’t be dictated to (although in Labour’s case they can certainly be impeded by very late selection). 

Is there an official Lib Dem target list? Yes, we can all just look at the tables of supposed marginality but that isn’t the same thing - such has been their progress in local government in some Tory areas that I’d be amazed if there weren’t official targets well outside those lists, while some within the supposedly easy range look much less possible. 

[bigfatron]

Being Lib Dems there is a complicated structure of targets of differing ranks - then there are the usual issues of geography (if there is no target in a county then maybe the ‘best’ seat becomes a de facto target as most activists won’t travel more than thirty miles or so).

But we seem to be:
a) far more realistic in our aspirations than 2019, targeting many fewer seats than 2019, and
b) more pragmatic and accepting that we may need to soft pedal in some places while Labour soft pedal in others to our mutual, but informal, convenience.

I still expect the few genuine 3-way marginals and one or two (Hallam?) Labour v Lib Dem seats to be keenly fought by both, but there will be none of Swinson’s hubristic nonsense…

[batman]

Apr 2, 2024 7:31:13 GMT matureleft said:

Apr 2, 2024 7:13:13 GMT bigfatron said:

Despite Graham’s relentless assertions across multiple seats, the Lib Dems will fight their forty top targets hard, including Woking, and will start as the clear alternative in this seat to the Tories.

Hopefully both us and Labour will avoid the fatuous lunacy of 2019 where at times both be parties seemed more intent on stopping the other from winning genuine targets than they were from winning their own…

There are signs of common sense, but local parties can’t be dictated to (although in Labour’s case they can certainly be impeded by very late selection). 

Is there an official Lib Dem target list? Yes, we can all just look at the tables of supposed marginality but that isn’t the same thing - such has been their progress in local government in some Tory areas that I’d be amazed if there weren’t official targets well outside those lists, while some within the supposedly easy range look much less possible. 

I'm not convinced there are any seats with narrow Tory leads over the Lib Dems which are "much less possible", the exceptions being Cities of London & Westminster and Finchley & Golders Green where I'm quite sure the Lib Dems know full well that Labour will be challenging strongly & they won't be. The others should all be taken with some comfort.

[matureleft]

Apr 2, 2024 8:40:41 GMT batman said:

Apr 2, 2024 7:31:13 GMT matureleft said:

There are signs of common sense, but local parties can’t be dictated to (although in Labour’s case they can certainly be impeded by very late selection). 

Is there an official Lib Dem target list? Yes, we can all just look at the tables of supposed marginality but that isn’t the same thing - such has been their progress in local government in some Tory areas that I’d be amazed if there weren’t official targets well outside those lists, while some within the supposedly easy range look much less possible. 

I'm not convinced there are any seats with narrow Tory leads over the Lib Dems which are "much less possible", the exceptions being Cities of London & Westminster and Finchley & Golders Green where I'm quite sure the Lib Dems know full well that Labour will be challenging strongly & they won't be. The others should all be taken with some comfort.

The "40 top targets" (from fairly standard lists) include some Labour seats, some fairly obvious Labour targets (Hitchin for example and, indeed, those you mention). That's what I meant.

I'm also assuming some analysis of available resources both in terms of local spending and activism and where there might be possible targets competing for what must be scarce resources. 

[graham]

Apr 2, 2024 7:13:13 GMT bigfatron said:

Despite Graham’s relentless assertions across multiple seats, the Lib Dems will fight their forty top targets hard, including Woking, and will start as the clear alternative in this seat to the Tories.

Hopefully both us and Labour will avoid the fatuous lunacy of 2019 where at times both be parties seemed more intent on stopping the other from winning genuine targets than they were from winning their own…

I don't doubt that the LDs will fight their target seats hard - just as they did in 2019 , 2010 and the Liberals as far back as  1974 - but if Labour is also campaigning hard in some of those seats against a national backdrop of a likely Labour victory , it will prove difficult to persuade Labour voters to switch from their own party - and that will apply to some who did so in 2019.

I did not vote Labour in 2019 - nor will I do so this year despite living in a Tory /Labour marginal.

[graham]

An interesting article has been published by former Labour MP - Nick Palmer - yesterday in Labour List. This is an extract from that -
‘Here’s how Labour can beat the Lib Dem bar charts – and win seats in new areas’
One of the effects of Labour’s strong lead in the polls is that many seats have become winnable that were not serious prospects before.
Broadly speaking, Labour is polling nearly 40% higher than in 2019 (from 32% to 42-47%) while the Tory vote has roughly halved (from 44% to 20-25%). If we want not only to win but to drive the Tory total down so it takes many years to recover, we need to win in entirely new terrain.
This matters, not just to give the Conservatives a bigger mountain to climb, but also because the Labour government that we hope to achieve needs to be broadly-based. Yes, many of our seats will come from the big cities which have suffered so much under the Tories, but we need to work for a broad national consensus that a progressive socialist government is good for our society and our future. That means showing that we can win all over the country and send MPs to Westminster with experience of communities very different from the traditional Labour strongholds.
A fundamental requirement is that we recognise that we have a unique opportunity this year. 20-point leads in the polls in an election year are incredibly rare. We need to be ready to seize the opportunity – it won’t necessarily happen again soon. That doesn’t mean that we should fight every seat as though it was a super-marginal. But where we have a real chance for the first time, we need to get out of the habit of thinking of ourselves as gallant losers.
What about those Lib Dem bar charts?
Typically, seats like these have traditionally had a strong Lib Dem presence, rarely actually winning but often coming second. The Lib Dems are nationally weaker than five years ago (from 12% to a typical 9-10% in the polls), but that doesn’t stop them claiming that only they can challenge the Tories in your seat, so Labour voters should give them “tactical” support.
What’s more, if they succeed in taking Labour votes “tactically”, they will use that in the next election (national or local) to say “Labour’s result last time shows that only we can win”. We need to break that self-justifying cycle in this exceptional year and reset expectations in the great majority of constituencies to show Labour is the natural alternative to the Tories.
The Lib Dems will try to push their message with a bar chart. Typically, the bars on the chart will be disproportionate from the actual figures (with a bigger Lib Dem bar and a smaller Labour bar), and they’ll refer to the previous election – regardless of boundary changes or the changes in support since 2019.
How can we show that things have changed?
In many seats, a very useful tool is the MRP polling from Electoral Calculus. MRP polls combine huge samples from your constituency and elsewhere (18,000 across Britain) with demographic analysis, showing how the make-up of your electorate is likely to translate into votes.
For example, a constituency near a university with numerous younger people in small towns and villages is more likely to be Labour than one with a predominantly elderly population with a settled rural population.
...
I was MP for Broxtowe (near Nottingham) for 13 years – the only Labour MP the constituency has had in its recent history – and fought every election against not only the Tories but also a Lib Dem campaign claiming that “only we can beat the Tories this time”. When I was first elected, most of our members didn’t really think we’d do it – my agent told me afterwards that he’d not really believed it. We had a small, harmonious campaign committee, and we simply worked on the assumption that we could win.'

[nobodyimportant]

How will Labour use Electoral Calculus to push their message here when Electoral Calculus's figures show the Lib Dems as the party best placed to beat the Tories in Woking and a close second behind the Tories in terms of predicted vote share?

You couldn't get more perfect figures for a Lib Dem bar chart if you tried

[The Bishop]

Apr 2, 2024 7:13:13 GMT bigfatron said:

Despite Graham’s relentless assertions across multiple seats, the Lib Dems will fight their forty top targets hard, including Woking, and will start as the clear alternative in this seat to the Tories.

Hopefully both us and Labour will avoid the fatuous lunacy of 2019 where at times both be parties seemed more intent on stopping the other from winning genuine targets than they were from winning their own…

I'm prepared to believe my party also did this to a degree, but if Labour attempted anything as egregious as the LibDems did in Kensington I would be interested to hear of it.

(before you mention Wimbledon, we were a clear second there in 2017 so were quite entitled to campaign properly - same is true of Finchley)

[Tony Otim]

Hmmm... I not sure that somebody advocating campaigning on the basis of figures pulled out of thin air by electoral calculus has any grounds to complain about Lib Dem bar charts, however bad...