South Yorkshire PCC

[bd]

A decent Labour result all things considered and it would be difficult to draw much conclusion from a by-election for a post that no one really understands. Labour clearly seems to have been effective at working in getting 'out' postal voters. Nothing wrong with that at all. You might have expected Labour to have done considerably better than this but there is a big anti-established-politics vote at the moment that to some extent the media are guiding towards UKIP.

The trick for all of the parties is to find a way of getting through to that group. I'm not sure the Tories attempt to be more like UKIP will work. For Labour they have to demonstrate how what they are offering is distinctly different from what is on offer from the Tories. If the plan is a watered down version of the alternative it is not enough. Past talk of taking on predatory capitalism was starting to craft a different offering.

[Devonian]

Oct 31, 2014 16:42:16 GMT bd said:

A decent Labour result all things considered and it would be difficult to draw much conclusion from a by-election for a post that no one really understands. Labour clearly seems to have been effective at working in getting 'out' postal voters. Nothing wrong with that at all. You might have expected Labour to have done considerably better than this but there is a big anti-established-politics vote at the moment that to some extent the media are guiding towards UKIP.

The trick for all of the parties is to find a way of getting through to that group. I'm not sure the Tories attempt to be more like UKIP will work. For Labour they have to demonstrate how what they are offering is distinctly different from what is on offer from the Tories. If the plan is a watered down version of the alternative it is not enough. Past talk of taking on predatory capitalism was starting to craft a different offering.

I think the Labour party being more effective at getting the postal vote out played a key role in an election with such a dismal turnout.

All in all a good result for Labour and a poor result for UKIP. I think now must really be the end of the road for the English Democrats.

[East Anglian Lefty]

Oct 31, 2014 15:10:20 GMT Andrew_S said:

Oct 31, 2014 15:09:16 GMT Philip Davies said:

Surely it wouldn't take long to find say 50 Conservative/ED votes that didn't have UKIP as the second choice to conclude a recount and a second choice count to be a futile task.

Of course it wouldn't take long, but I thought elections were about following procedures regardless of what the result is.

And is there a procedure for automatically having a recount if one party is with X% of 50%? I would think the reason there wasn't a recount was that nobody asked for one, because UKIP knew full well it wouldn't be enough.

Oct 31, 2014 15:18:15 GMT LDCaerdydd said:

BBC News (TV) mentioned that Labour held the seat a little while ago, and it was just that. No coverage from the count, no mention of the figures or that it was won on 1st Pref.

Also, there is as far as I know no provision for a recount for the list seats to the National Assembly or the EU seats should it be tight between two seats.

The World at One had a report from the count about 20 minutes before the result was declared. It was clear they'd been expecting Labour to do much worse, and were sticking with that line in spite of the initial results because they didn't have anything else prepared.

[neilm]

It's fair to say that everyone expected a second round, and ten votes another way would have seen one.

[Sibboleth]

This is terrible news for Ed Miliband.

[Devonian]

Oct 31, 2014 18:18:20 GMT Sibboleth said:

This is terrible news for Ed Miliband.

I take it that's the headline for the next Dan Hodges article?

[mboy]

The next 10 Dan Hodges articles will be on how Scotland is a disaster for Ed. He's going to be correct, too.

[Devonian]

Oct 31, 2014 18:44:32 GMT mboy said:

The next 10 Dan Hodges articles will be on how Scotland is a disaster for Ed. He's going to be correct, too.

I think the Scotland news is bad for Miliband but I don't think it will prevent him from becoming PM. I saw a Times article today that said the the SNP surge made it less likely that Ed Miliband could 'get an overall majority and become PM'. It also said that if the Tories end up with the largest number of seats but the SNP hold the balance of power then the Tories would have to do a deal with the SNP.

I don't think it crossed the article writer's mind that in that situation the SNP wouldn't have to do a deal with the Tories. Miliband doesn't need an overall majority to become PM. It would be electoral suicide for the SNP to prop up a Conservative government and they won't do it. If the SNP do get 40 odd seats and hold the balance of power they are most likely to come to a supply and confidence deal with Labour even if Labour have fewer seats than the Conservatives.

If this does happen the Conservative party won't really have a leg to stand on in complaint given their positions in the 2011 and 2014 referendums. That won't stop them complaining about it though.

[J.G.Harston]

Oct 31, 2014 18:18:20 GMT Sibboleth said:

This is terrible news for Ed Miliband.

Oh I don't know. "This shows overwhelming support for Labour's plan to save the NHS and abolish the bedroom tax and raise the minimum wage..."

[neilm]

Oct 31, 2014 20:49:29 GMT J.G.Harston said:

Oct 31, 2014 18:18:20 GMT Sibboleth said:

This is terrible news for Ed Miliband.

Oh I don't know. "This shows overwhelming support for Labour's plan to save the NHS and abolish the bedroom tax and raise the minimum wage..."

I wonder if the new PCC used those words, or a form of them, in his victory speech. Who wants to take bets that he did?

[finsobruce]

Nov 1, 2014 0:53:50 GMT neilm said:

Oct 31, 2014 20:49:29 GMT J.G.Harston said:

Oh I don't know. "This shows overwhelming support for Labour's plan to save the NHS and abolish the bedroom tax and raise the minimum wage..."

I wonder if the new PCC used those words, or a form of them, in his victory speech. Who wants to take bets that he did?

I haven't seen his speech but I did see an interview with the BBC afterwards and it wasn't like that at all..... Billings is a retired Anglican priest and a very considered individual. An unusual sort of candidate these days. (I stand to be corrected over the speech of course)

[Deleted]

Oct 31, 2014 12:56:50 GMT Pimpernal said:

Vote Tory get Labour...

In a preferential system you can't really say that!

[Deleted]

Given the results of Heywood and Middleton, which is demographically fairly similar to Donny, Barnsley and Rotherham I would have thought, this rather answers the question of whether ukip voters are low or high turnout biased.

[Pimpernal]

Nov 1, 2014 8:53:23 GMT joe said:

Given the results of Heywood and Middleton, which is demographically fairly similar to Donny, Barnsley and Rotherham I would have thought, this rather answers the question of whether ukip voters are low or high turnout biased.

Which is encouraging for the General Election then...

[The Bishop]

I think the actual answer may be that UKIP do best in moderate turnouts, so not necessarily?

[Davıd Boothroyd]

What is common to Heywood and Middleton, and to the South Yorkshire PCC byelection, is that where UKIP is challenging Labour, it does quite well in hoovering up the anti-Labour vote - but it does not substantially reduce Labour's support.

[thirdchill]

Nov 1, 2014 12:19:49 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

What is common to Heywood and Middleton, and to the South Yorkshire PCC byelection, is that where UKIP is challenging Labour, it does quite well in hoovering up the anti-Labour vote - but it does not substantially reduce Labour's support.

Either that or UKIP does grab some of labour's support (not a massive amount though) and labour balances that out by getting support from elswhere (former lib dem supporters).

[Pete Whitehead]

According to a poster at another site who was involved in the Labour campaign in Sheffield, Labour polled 65% of first preferences within the Hallam constituency. If that is true then it is certainly the case that a large part of the LD vote switched to Labour while Labour's strength in their more traditional strongholds was weaker than usual (as a combined share of 56% for right of centre parties in Rotherham would indicate).
Broadly speaking Labour's electoral coalition consists of three elements. The indiginous working class; left Liberal middle class types (including students); ethnic minorities. The second and third are now solid for Labour again and are particularly motivated to vote against UKIP. The third element in particular is also disproportionately well represented amongst postal voters and therefore may well (though this can only be speculation) have cast a disproportionate number of votes in this election. This does suggest that Labour has lost a large amount of support amongst the first group - some to abstention and some directly to UKIP and in some areas (Rotherham but not Barnsley) will have polled fewer votes than UKIP amongst this group. The group has certainly not moved en masse - there is still a kind of brain-dead tribal Labour vote of the type that says 'my dad voted Labour and his dad before him' but then given the particular political history of this area (especially in relation to the connection with the coal mining industry) this tendency is likely to be more alive here than almost anywhere else in England

[Deleted]

Nov 1, 2014 12:19:49 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

What is common to Heywood and Middleton, and to the South Yorkshire PCC byelection, is that where UKIP is challenging Labour, it does quite well in hoovering up the anti-Labour vote - but it does not substantially reduce Labour's support.

Try being in government and then looking how these places vote. Regardless it does substantially reduce labour's support. It is just that this is being replaced by liberal-left ex LD voters. That much surely is obvious.

[Pimpernal]

Nov 1, 2014 13:58:57 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

According to a poster at another site who was involved in the Labour campaign in Sheffield, Labour polled 65% of first preferences within the Hallam constituency. If that is true then it is certainly the case that a large part of the LD vote switched to Labour while Labour's strength in their more traditional strongholds was weaker than usual (as a combined share of 56% for right of centre parties in Rotherham would indicate).
Broadly speaking Labour's electoral coalition consists of three elements. The indiginous working class; left Liberal middle class types (including students); ethnic minorities. The second and third are now solid for Labour again and are particularly motivated to vote against UKIP. The third element in particular is also disproportionately well represented amongst postal voters and therefore may well (though this can only be speculation) have cast a disproportionate number of votes in this election. This does suggest that Labour has lost a large amount of support amongst the first group - some to abstention and some directly to UKIP and in some areas (Rotherham but not Barnsley) will have polled fewer votes than UKIP amongst this group. The group has certainly not moved en masse - there is still a kind of brain-dead tribal Labour vote of the type that says 'my dad voted Labour and his dad before him' but then given the particular political history of this area (especially in relation to the connection with the coal mining industry) this tendency is likely to be more alive here than almost anywhere else in England

A lot of Lib Dem votes were tactical anti-Labour/anti-Tory votes anyway. So it's not surprising that they shed votes in other elections covering the same area. What will be surprising is if they can hold enough of them next year to hang onto enough MPs to remain relevant afterwards...