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I just posted this in the EU thread, but I'll post it here too. I made an excel spreadsheet that uses UK polling and turnout to calculate how the regional seats will be distributed, which some of you may be interested in. The eligible voters are from the ONS's 2012 electoral roll, the vote share is the 5-10 likelihood to vote from the latest Comres poll and the turnout % is from 2009's election. Sometimes there's a draw in which case all parties involved get the seat, simply adding 0.1% onto one or two parties' share should fix it. Northern Ireland not included because I was really only interested in the national parties.
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May 1, 2014 17:38
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KKKlean Energy posted:Lost amidst the sandwich chat: Yes, sorry (and thanks!), Lemon's basically got it. The numbers to the right of the vote share are the party's quotient in that round, largest quotient gets the seat, the quotient is calculated by dividing the number of votes the party received by 1+ the number of seats they already have. They're not relevant if you just want the overall seats, but they allow you to work out by how many votes a party won a seat, which helped me decide whether to vote Labour or Green in my region. If anyone's downloaded it then the values you need to change are the party's vote share in each individual region, and the turnout for each region. Everything else calculates itself or is input from the ONS. I made it so I could easily make my own predictions based on election night exit polls etc.
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May 2, 2014 10:51
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LemonDrizzle posted:During its last tenure in government, the Labour party invested heavily in the NHS, the education system, and social housing, and also significantly expanded the welfare state via the tax credit system. They also engaged in a lot of privatisation (prisons, NHS, planned the Royal Mail privatisation), huge deregulation of the financial sector, were ridiculously fond of PFI, presided over a rise in inequality (some of which has to be attributed to their complacency over redistributive tax and tax avoidance), egged on the housing bubble, introduced workfare, introduced academies. Then of course the really, really big one, for which they deserve to be unelectable for a generation, Iraq. They weren't conservative, they were generally better than the modern Tories (on quite a few issues worse than the pre-Thatcher Tories, though), but they weren't leftist either. If you want centrist liberalism, then that's fine, but I think most here want something a good deal more leftist than that, and I don't think we should start snarking people for being dissatisfied with New Labour; there's a wealth of reasons to be.
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May 11, 2014 14:24
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Fluo posted:So who you voting for? The Libdems again? Totally irrelevant really; I don't think the Tories have ever not won here. Green in the EU though; they stand a decent chance of a seat. (Yes, I did know a significant number of Lib Dems are far from left-wing; that's why I've never voted for them.) To a certain extent Milliband's brought me back to the party, I can see voting for them next year.
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May 11, 2014 14:33
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Fluo posted:There's still some Blairites within the Labour Party but I think if they aren't given enough powers it will make them more votable. David Milliband is a massive Blairite, Ed Milliband however isn't and wasn't traditionally compared to his brother, and the big Blairites like John Rein, Alan Milburn, Hazel Blears, David Blunkett etc. However when trying to get some votes for leader he did say he is a 'fan' of Tony Blair and has spoken in praise of 'early Blairism'. Take that as you will, either means he was trying to take some of the votes that would have default went to David Milliband or if he was a fan honeymoon period of Blairism (eg all the stuff he did prior to the Iraq War). Definitely agree, Ed seemed the most left-wing candidate (apart from Diane Abbot who was a bit, well, odd) and I definitely would've left (again) had David won. It's hard to tell where the Blairites are at at the moment. Early on it seemed they'd been pushed to the edges, given especially the noises that folks like Dan Hodges were making, but after it became clear Ed's negatives weren't going to go down they seemed to gain a bit more influence. Tom Watson's resignation supposedly had a Blairite hand in it. Certainly not fond of some of the shadow cabinet, but the big policy announcements have been the best I've heard since before Blair, so I'm cautiously optimistic.
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May 11, 2014 15:01
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LemonDrizzle posted:I'm certainly not saying that New Labour were perfect, but it's absurd to say that they or the modern Labour party were/are equivalent to Tories. On top of that, a couple of your criticisms are inaccurate or without context. It's simply not true that Labour deregulated the financial sector - that happened during Thatcher's Big Bang. Labour actually significantly increased its regulation (between the Big Bang and the creation of the FSA, the sector was largely self-regulated). Their failure in that respect wasn't that they removed regulations, it was that they didn't go far enough when creating new ones and were blind to systemic risk. Well, I strongly disagree that their regulation increases were at all 'significant'; they were evidentially minor, or the crash would obviously have looked very different for us. Sitting and watching a house burn might not be as bad as starting the fire, but I'm not going to delude myself that I should be grateful for that. You could at most say they chucked a couple of watering cans onto the fire. LemonDrizzle posted:I also think that PPP/PFI is maligned for rather unrealistic reasons and tends to be criticized without any attempt to account for the political climate. When New Labour took power, a lot of the national infrastructure had been left to rot for the best part of two decades and was badly in need of investment. The electorate was very supportive of such investment, but rabidly opposed to paying for it through taxation or allowing it to be funded by heavy borrowing, so Labour was stuck. PFI was a way of squaring that circle - not an economically efficient way by any means, but just about the only one that was politically viable at the time. I have little sympathy for a government too scared to lead, especially after the kind of win they saw in 97, instead opting for an ill-thought out and risky scheme that left many public services not only insolvent, but abetted their privatisation. LemonDrizzle posted:e: also, they weren't at all "complacent over redistributive tax" - their tax changes were quite heavily redistributive. If you think that then you must have a much lower bar than me. Look, someone who was on, say, the left of the '70s Labour party is so far to the left of the modern Labour party, that from their perspective there is not significant difference between them and the Conservatives. Almost every good thing they did was far, far too little in my opinion. But, if you're centre-left, if you hold a similar ideology to the modern Labour party, then you would naturally be fairly happy and satisfied with what Blair and Brown did. I don't, many don't, and none of us are ever going to be happy about New Labour, or think that it was a good thing; it was merely better than all realistic alternatives. Saying we ought to think differently on this is like asking a centre-leftist to look on the bright side of a Conservative government.
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May 12, 2014 10:07
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LemonDrizzle posted:Your take on the situation in '97 is also almost completely ahistorical. A large part of the reason Labour won that thumping majority was precisely because they pledged not to exceed the previous government's spending targets. Look at what happened in '92: the Tories were hugely unpopular, had recently tried to ram through a policy that literally sparked riots and helped to bring down the Prime Minister, and still won the general election because the electorate was afraid that a Labour government would go on a tax-and-spend binge. There's a reason that this advert is held up as a brutally effective masterpiece: This is more than a little revisionist. Everyone forgets John Smith, but while he was leader Labour had a commanding poll lead (way beyond what Kinnock saw pre-92), the Conservatives got whooped in council elections (worst defeat in 30 years) and Labour were pretty much guaranteed the '97 victory. It wouldn't have been as big as Blair's, the polls may well have narrowed going into the election as the Conservatives scaremongered about 'reckless spending', but they would've won and then been in a position to deliver leftist policies, unlike Blair, who, as you identified, sold the shop for an increased majority. Maybe it would've gone to poo poo, maybe the public would've hated the government's policies and a lurch to the right would've been needed later anyway, but maybe it wouldn't and maybe the country would be a lot better off for it. Given that you're arguing the opinion 'New Labour and the Conservatives are essentially the same' is indefensible, bringing up the spending pledge doesn't really help your case. The core of New Labour's campaign was that they would do essentially what the Conservatives had been doing, but with less scandal and less infighting over Europe. Whether the other bits like tax credits and the minimum wage level were dabbling round the edges or hugely important is, yet again, a matter of perspective. Given that, 'New Labour and the Conservatives are essentially the same' is an opinion that someone could legitimately hold, just as 'New Labour and the Conservatives are very different' is also a legitimate opinion. LemonDrizzle posted:As for Labour's left from the 1970s, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that they were incapable of differentiating between plainly different things. After all, back in the day they were incapable of differentiating between good politics and self-destructive unthinking tribalistic bullshit that resulted in the near-absolute destruction of trade union power and almost two decades of unbroken Tory rule. You're right, how dare people with leftist opinions not simply shut up and accede to those who disagree with them and single-handedly, entirely without other factors, allow Thatcher to increase a majority off the back of a decreased vote share. Politicians should just all sit in the centre and do whatever the gently caress flies through the mind of the average Joe this week, none of this leading, persuading, educating nonsense. Just like Thatcher, she certainly didn't secure a big election win off of a radical platform, nor did she do anything radical while in office. Yep, centrism is truly the only way to go. Painfully over the top sarcasm aside, are you really going to deny the relativity of a spectrum and simply say people not in the middle have different opinions because they're stupid? You can't tell people that their perceptions are wrong, only have your own differing ones.
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May 12, 2014 14:58
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LemonDrizzle posted:People forget John Smith because he died 3 years out from the General Election. He may well have been able to win had he lived, but you can't just point to a big poll lead at that stage and go "see, it would've been a sure thing!" It is important to remember John Smith because it damages the Blairite line of 'my way or unelectability'. It doesn't kill it, but it definitely damages it; if it can't be said that Smith would definitely win (it can't), then it also can't be said that he definitely would have lost. Therefore, it can't be said the Blair was definitely the only leader who could win in '97. LemonDrizzle posted:As for "legitimate opinions" and perceptions, I absolutely disagree that all perspectives are equally valid, reasonable, or useful. I mean, if you're determined to selectively pick up on similarities and overlook major points of difference Do you not see how easy it is for someone to say you're doing that? 'Sure, there are small differences between them like whether or not child tax credits are a good idea, but there are huge similarities, such as accepting the fundamentals of capitalism.' -To a communist the fundamentals of capitalism is a far bigger and more contentious issue than child tax credits, it's only because the vast majority of us implicitly accept them that they seem to be an irrelevance. I just think it's a little arrogant to say yours is the only correct opinion on the matter. Well, this has truly been an exercise into how many times basic post-structuralist theory can be crammed into a comment. Having realised that, it's past time for me to stop; I'm not in the least bit qualified to be convincing anyone to change their opinions on any aspect of postmodernism.
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May 12, 2014 20:10
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ronya posted:what exactly do you expect an alternate-world Smith government to have done, anyway? Was his relations to the militants any less frosty, for all of Smith's desire to keep the totems of the Labour Party? If I'm not mistaken I did already mention that Smith was definitely on the right of old Labour, but definitely still in old Labour, as opposed to Blair, who would simply not have been found on the spectrum. I don't know about you, but I look for someone who has good policies, not who would stop people's 'carping'. Yes, the left would still complain and cry betrayal, but we'd be significantly to the left of where we are now. By the '90s there was really no way of moving back to the old reference frame (opinion); Thatcher had been too successful, but many feel Blair moved more to the right than was necessary. You mention the French and German old socialist parties, which, really, are good examples. A lot of the continent moved to the right, it does, in retrospect, seem unavoidable. But, we ended up further to the right than most, and that difference is seen by many to be the difference between John Smith and Tony Blair. When centrists deride factionalism what they really mean is 'everyone else should shut up and support my faction' Alecto fucked around with this message at 21:09 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 20:56
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ronya posted:well, hence my question as to what, exactly, the difference were supposed to be. Blair's chief sin seems to be not so much the rejection of Clause IV aspirations, but rubbing New Labour's victory in the faces of the losers. Further right than most? Compared to what? Compared to the Danish Social Democrats outsourcing the fire service to Falck? The Swedish Social Democrats outsourcing the Stockholm metro to a French contractor? Well, if you want me to essentially just make poo poo up then I'm game. I would've imagined a more-left-than-Blair-but-right-of-New-Labour government to have reintroduced a lot more financial regulation than Blair did, to have raised upper income and wealth taxes more than Blair did, to have increased funding for public services more directly, rather than largely via PFI, to not have privatised prisons and parts of the NHS, maybe even, if we're really hopeful, to re-nationalise the railways and/or utilities, but 97-02 was probably a bit early for that. Oh, and not gone to war in Iraq, always forget that one. The reason of course that this is me wildly speculating is that most of Europe didn't get heaved to the right in one big yank like Thatcher did to us, but, for example in France, they went through a series of small concessions by both major parties, inching further to the right. Thus the left parties of Europe, for the most part, had the job of holding ground and not changing anything too drastically (plus financial crises cleanup), whereas the job of any non-Conservative government in '97 was to repair the country after Thatcherism. And of course, unfortunately, John Smith didn't live till anywhere near the start of a general election season. The sum total of what's known on the matter is little more than 'the right of the Labour party were concerned Smith was trying a one last heave approach'. Make of that what you will. You also seem to be treating political ideologies as if they're all or nothing. The fact that the governments you mentioned also engaged in privatisation does not necessarily mean they are the same as New Labour. The Danish government of 93-02 engaged in something far closer to old-school tax and spend than anything New Labour did. Scandinavian politics are also too different to make reliable comparisons in that they have parties to the right, left and in between the biggest parties that actually get elected. The centre-left party needn't be as radical if the radicals are voting for the socialist party anyway. e: LemonDrizzle posted:Well, it's true that we can't definitively say whether Smith would have won or lost, or whether he'd have basically done what Blair did in government or tried to chart a different course. We also can't say whether or not cannibal lesbians from outer space would have descended on the planet if Smith had lived. I'm still not sure what's to be gained by debating might-have-beens, though. All I'm saying is that given Labour's serial failure between 1979 and 1996, it was pretty clear that big changes were needed if the party was to have any chance of assembling a workable majority, and that most of New Labour's decisions are understandable and justifiable given the context in which they were made. Yes, you're right, saying polling data and hugely successful local elections suggested Smith stood a very good change of a majority without going as far to the right as Blair is the same as saying cannibal lesbians would've descended from outer space if a politician hadn't died. I think the Smith leadership calls the Blairite narrative into question and potentially shows that pre-Blair's leadership run the right of the then Labour party (who became the centrist Blairites), were at least very slightly to the right of political centre, in that they seemed to have concerns that Smith was too far left to win, a concern not shared by a significant enough proportion of the population that Smith seemed likely to gain a majority. And now that I've said that about as many ways as I can think of I'll stop wasting everyone's time with history and stop using that precious resource that is internet forum posts on something that has undetermined potential gain. Alecto fucked around with this message at 22:45 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 22:27
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I just noticed the OP was updatedKKKlean Energy posted:Click through to see election results for your region from 2009, which may help inform how you should vote if you want to keep certain bastards out (the form of PR used reduces the relevance of tactical voting but it is not completely off the table). and thought I could weigh in a little on the tactical voting mention, given that it's really completely different to what we're used to in FPTP. After a certain point (a point that all regions will almost definitely reach) spreading votes is more effective than concentrating them. To work out how your vote is most effective, you need to look at what's going to happen in the final round of your region, which is the only round that really matters (if any of the previous rounds don't go the way you predicted then you're hosed, there's absolutely no way to account for this so simply assume it won't happen). Each party is assigned a quotient, which is calculated by V/(s+1), where V is the number of votes they've received and s is the number of rounds the party has already won. So say it's the sixth and final round in you region, Labour have won 2 seats, each vote they receive adds only 1/3 to their 6th round quotient in that example. Say UKIP have won one seat, then their quotient increases by 1/2 per vote, so they need much fewer votes than Labour to win that final seat. So if you're trying to decide whether, for example, to vote Green or Labour, and the Greens haven't one any seats yet, if the difference between UKIP's and the Green's 6th round quotient is less than 3 times the difference between UKIP's and Labour's, then voting Green is more likely to keep UKIP out. So this is why spreading can be more effective than concentrating- in the final round a vote for a small party can be worth 2, 3 or 4 times more than a big one. You can easily calculate a party's quotient by using the calculator that was (very gratifyingly) linked to in the OP by inputting whatever polling data you can find for your region. However, regional polling data can be very unreliable and because of this, I really wouldn't recommend trying to vote tactically. Though, I am using it to try and work out whether Labour or the Greens have the best chance at the final seat in my region.
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May 15, 2014 19:59
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KKKlean Energy posted:I like to think of myself as a numbers person but it's still beyond me - thanks for the follow-up though, I'll take a closer look at the London region in your calculator later! I am pretty terrible at explaining myself, I wouldn't worry. One last pass at it: if a party has won two seats, in the race for the last one, their vote is divided by 3, so a vote for them increases their quotient by a 1/3, because ofc 1 vote divided by 3 is 1/3. If a party hasn't won any seats yet, then their quotient is simply their number of votes, so in the race for the last seat, an extra vote for them is worth 1, rather than a 1/3 for a more successful party. This creates scenarios where small parties like the Greens are more likely to keep UKIP out than bigger ones like Labour. Such as, 3|UKIP-Labour| < |UKIP-Green|. Or to make it more general: (SP2+1)|P1-P2| < (SP3+1)|P1-P3|. P1/2/3 being party 1/2/3's quotient in the final round and SP2/SP3 being the number of seats party 2/3 has already won. (Yeh, probably not much simpler, eh.) The real takeaway is it's very, very difficult to vote to keep someone out in PR. Using it to decide who of your two favoured parties to vote for is possible, but proper tactical voting is as likely to waste you vote or have some unintended consequence as it is to actually help. (I'm assuming most people here are choosing between Greens and Labour) In all regions except Scotland, Wales, North East and of course Northern Ireland, the Greens have a perfectly realistic chance of a seat. (London specifically is one of the few places with a Green incumbent, and it's looking pretty close.) Alecto fucked around with this message at 21:43 on May 15, 2014 |
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May 15, 2014 21:23
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Obliterati posted:Given we're talking about UKIP, it would be interesting to note that surveys suggest UKIP voters aren't all disaffected Conservatives: There's been a lot of polling on this sort of thing. I think the most recent being this and this. Given that even half of Conservative voters are pro-nationalisation of the railways, it shouldn't be in the least bit surprising that a more eclectic group like UKIP would be in favour of some leftist populism. It'll be interesting to see how the party manage this in their 2015 election manifesto. The last one had full privatisation of the NHS and a flat income tax in it, which wouldn't exactly help them with working class Labour.
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May 16, 2014 12:22
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Greens have a chance in every English constituency except the North East (probably, local breakdowns are about as reliable as chicken entrails), but are looking strongest, perhaps even likely, in the South East, South West and London. So having just sliced a chicken open my best guess at the South East would be UKIP 3, Lab 1, Con 1, Green 1. The Greens'll be in a bitter fight with the Lib Dems and UKIP for a seat. Voting Labour here is NOT tactical; Labour will almost definitely win one, and only one, seat here, the Greens are the smart choice. Unless you happen to like Lib Dems/UKIP/Con. The Greens have very, very little chance in Scotland and Wales where it seems the nationalist parties squeeze them out. Just to really emphasise the point about single constituency breakdowns, a recent Comres poll has the BNP at 20% in the North West and 42% in London. 42%. In London. People aren't joking when they say guessing is more likely to provide accurate results. On the nuclear/GMO issue. Yes, they have a bad policy there, but Labour/SNP/anyotherpartyyoucaretoname have some-to-fucktons of bad policies too. The Greens broadly advocate the economic policies most here wish Labour would and aren't utter shits in the EU parliament, which Labour arguably are. They'll oppose the dreadful aspects of the TTIP about forced privatisations and Investor-State Tribunals, where Labour won't (whether or not that'll actually change anything). They're the better choice for the EU and they actually have a chance in most regions. (/opinion) Alecto fucked around with this message at 23:24 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 23:22
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LemonDrizzle posted:It's important to distinguish between predictions based on crosstabs from national polls (which are worthless as you note) and those based on focused polling of specific electoral regions, which is substantially more credible. There hasn't been much regional polling in England but there has been some in London, and it really doesn't suggest that the Greens have much hope there - both YouGov and Survation had them on 7% in late April/early May, putting them behind both Labour's fourth MEP slot *and* the Lib Dems. It's not inconceivable that they could take a seat in London but there's reliable polling data to suggest that they won't. Given the mercurial nature of voters on mid-parliament elections and the abominably low turnout that's to be expected, I'd say 7% is definitely within the 'have a chance/worth a vote' range. But that's definitely lower than I had them pegged at, so thanks for that info. If you, or anyone else, have seen single-constituency EU polling, a link would really make my day. I'll be having an extensive google tomorrow, but if that fails, I'd hate to end up with a filtered average of May polling or something like that. Alecto fucked around with this message at 23:44 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 23:42
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TinTower posted:The Greens are also in the danger of repeating the dangers of Cleggmania; the Lib Dems were on 31% after the first debate in 2010, I recall. They might pick up, say, Yorkshire and the Humber from the BNP, where I'm guessing the balance will end up 2 Labour, 2 UKIP, 1 Lib Dem, 1 Green, but I doubt they'll pick up in, say, East England. I'd be ASTOUNDED if Lib Dems and the Greens got a seat but not the Tories. Too much traditionally Tory countryside for them to not get a seat, i'd have thought, despite the UKIP appeal. It'll almost definitely be down to whether the Greens maintain their mid-May poll bump into Thursday that'd make the difference between the Greens and the Lib Dems. There also looked for a while like there was a chance of UKIP or Labour squeezing them both out for a third seat, but they've both dipped a bit recently.
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May 21, 2014 00:32
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LemonDrizzle posted:I'm not aware of any region-level polling for places other than Scotland, Wales, and London, sorry. The most recent London polls were done by YouGov and Survation. Thanks for that. I imagine if polls for the smaller individual English regions exist they'll be private internal party ones. As for the Tea Party, they may not be winning many primaries anymore, but they effectively shut down the government for 4 years. That might not be what some of the more centrist voters that were taken in by them in 2010 wanted, but for sure it's what their core supporters wanted. They also continue to have a huge effect on the Overton window of the Republican party; for the first time in their careers senior Republicans are having to fight tooth and nail in what were previously very, very safe seats. To the extent where some established Republicans have to behave like Tea Partiers for fear of losing their next race. We might see a similar outcome with UKIP, where they don't get far nationally themselves, but pose strong challenges in 'safe' Southern Tory seats, forcing MPs to the right and to the racism, creating an ever widening gap between the ideologies of Tory MPs from 'safe' seats and those from marginals. It'd be interesting to see how our traditionally much stronger whip system would be able to cope with that, and to what extent the Tories would be able to keep electing leaders who would follow the centrism strategy if that happened. The way the Democrats stemmed the tide in 2010 was to spend an ungodly amount of money making adverts stuffed full of Tea Party candidates' quotes. Yes, they were probably all racist and homophobic, but above all that, they were astoundingly stupid. The disasters they brought about in government after 2010 pretty much took care of the rest and now they can only win very conservative districts and put pressure on the party behind the scenes. I'm not really sure if UKIP are quite as outrageously stupid, so we might have to wait for the entropy-like effects of 'I voted for them last time, but nothing really changed so I don't think I'll bother this time.' that befalls every protest party who promise too much. Unless they actually do have a major, first-hand impact in which case we might all be hosed.
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May 21, 2014 13:05
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I threw the May polls into the hopper and the results then into my spreadsheet, so I'll post the results here. This is NOT HUGELY ACCURATE, but about as accurate as it gets for EU elections. I also suggested which party to vote for at the end, Labour, Green, SNP or Plaid, if you want your vote to have the best chance at keeping a real poo poo out. Yorkshire and Humber: 3 UKIP, 2 Lab, 1 Con: Green (Green and Libs chasing UKIP) North East: 2 Lab, 1 UKIP: Lab (Labour holding against Cons) North West: 4 Lab, 3 UKIP, 1 Con: Green (Green and Libs chasing UKIP) East Midlands: 3 UKIP, 1 Lab, 1 Con: Lab (Labour chasing UKIP) West Midlands: 3 Lab, 2 UKIP, 2 Con: N/A (Green and Libs chasing Labour) East of England: 3 UKIP, 2 Con, 2 Lab: N/A (Green and Libs chasing Labour) London: 4 Lab, 2 Con, 2 UKIP: N/A (Green and Libs chasing Labour) South East: 4 UKIP, 3 Con, 2 Lab, 1 Lib: Green (Green and Libs chasing UKIP) South West: 3 UKIP, 2 Lab, 1 Con: Green (Green and Libs chasing UKIP) Wales: 2 Lab, 1 UKIP, 1 Con: Plaid (Plaid chasing Cons) Scotland: 3 SNP, 2 Lab, 1 Con: SNP (SNP holding against UKIP) Overall that's 26 Lab, 25 UKIP, 15 Con, 3 SNP, 1 Lib, 0 Green, 0 Plaid. Expect UKIP to do better if turnout doesn't break 30%. Also a note to anyone using my spreadsheet, the North West and West Midlands are both electing one more MEP than 2009. Copy and pasting the three ending columns into the next three columns under both regions and then changing the Seats to be = the correct column letter fixes it. Alecto fucked around with this message at 20:39 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 20:18
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The weather today's pretty unfortunate. It might depress undecided/unenthusiastic turnout, which would be to the benefit of UKIP. Looks like it's gonna rain in the North of England over the afternoon and parts of the Midlands and the South East as people leave work. I suppose the question is, can turnout be much lower than it was already going to be. On the other hand, UKIP vote is disproportionately grey, which itself is disproportionately depressed by adverse weather, so I suppose it's about the best turnout depressant, if you had to have one.
Alecto fucked around with this message at 11:31 on May 22, 2014 |
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May 22, 2014 11:28
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Fluo posted:Why do you seem to have a vendetta against Labour the last couple of months? TinTower's right though, Labour MEPs have pretty bad voting records.
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May 22, 2014 12:33
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Ferrosol posted:My ballot papet just said make one selection! So echoing the wait what Most PR systems still only give you one vote, but calculations are done with the vote totals such that minor parties are far more likely to win seats.
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May 22, 2014 13:26
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Fans posted:Labour is getting a seat for sure, they're trying to push for two. Not that I'd recommend Plaid Cymru because they're a bit mental. Labour should almost definitely get two in Wales. It looked like Plaid had the best chance of taking the Conservatives' seat; they'd need to outperform the polls by ~10,000 votes, whereas Labour would need another ~120,000 and the Greens ~70,000.
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May 22, 2014 15:15
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Angepain posted:Voted Green up here in Scotland as the least-worst. I've also looked up their first-placed candidate, Maggie Chapman, on the internet and she seems a good egg. (I'm awaiting the immediate UKMT character assasination, but I've already voted so too late, everyone.) I've been looking at a few different charts based on option polls with varyingly reasonable sample sizes declaring the exact way I need to vote to keep UKIP out, but they don't seem to particularly agree and I have the feeling tactical voting might not be as easy as it is for our old friend FPTP. Also I think I'm sworn off tactical voting now out of pure stubbornness. If the bigger parties want my second preferences they can drat well give me a voting system that lets me express them. Harumph harumph, etc. Basically, the SNP or Labour need to quadruple UKIP's vote (it looks like the SNP will), or, the Greens need to simply beat them.
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May 22, 2014 17:00
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Just took my dad to vote (Green in EU and Labour for the parish) in his red hammer and sickle shirt. Woman at the polling station said it's been the busiest she's ever seen it in a non-general, and she's been going since the '90s. Given the rich, white, elderly demographics of the area, this is most likely to be a swarm of grey kippers. I'm fearing the worst, UKMT 
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May 22, 2014 19:27
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The disconnect between people's reaction to casual, subtle and otherwise disguised racism, and their reaction to similar homophobia or misogyny really bloody confuses me. I don't have an opinion on whether the gimp stuff is homophobia, but there have been an awful lot of 'hah, gay therefore bad' jokes about Cameron and Clegg, including by supposedly left-wing people, that's gone completely un-challenged.
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May 22, 2014 22:31
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TinTower posted:One of the things I have to commend Cameron (and May) on is risking open revolt in his party on the issue of LGBT rights. Labour were too chicken poo poo on LGBT rights in majority and wouldn't have even considered it if either Peter Robinson or Stonewall said no. Hmmmmmm. I'd be more inclined to say that Cameron promised to follow Blair's liberalism, but that his economic reforms were making the Conservatives seem like the nasty party again. So, he chose an issue that had broad popular support, a 'nice' policy, to pass that would cause the least problem with his party. I'm not sure that he correctly identified how much trouble gay marriage was going to cause, but given his vote of dissent on the repeal of Section 28, I find his moral conviction on the matter dubious.
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May 22, 2014 23:24
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Jack the Lad posted:Conservative MP's Telegraph blog with bonus Royal Mail bit I noticed after posting With UKIP already causing havoc across the country in the council elections, I'd expect to see a lot more Tories breaking ranks to call for this. I think it'd end badly for them, though. It could hurt the Conservatives seriously with centrists, and UKIP with their anti-establishment protest vote. Plus Farage has said in the past he'd only contemplate a pact with the likes of Boris or Gove as leader, and I doubt the Conservatives would go so far as to chuck Cameron this close to an election.
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May 23, 2014 00:33
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IceAgeComing posted:Jacob Rees-Mogg is just the most stereotypical Tory you could possibly get. I refuse to believe it's not an act. He's the literal embodiment of aristocracy, I thoroughly expect him to admit to being a comedian on his deathbed.
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May 23, 2014 00:46
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Spangly A posted:How the living hell do you believe this? 51st, in fact, by my reckon.
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May 23, 2014 14:23
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FML, my sister just told me about how the majority of the English population are no longer white British. But I guess that's fair enough and she can't at all be blamed for swallowing an obviously ludicrous statistic (~80% of the English population is white British), because, you know, she read it somewhere, and what is healthy scepticism anyway?
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May 23, 2014 14:31
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Myrddin_Emrys posted:So did the other three, a hell of a lot more than UKIP's in comparison, so that argument is just stupid. Labour up 2, Conservatives up 4, UKIP down 6. You seem to have an interesting relationship with facts.
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May 23, 2014 19:06
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SelfOM posted:Let's start with the most operative form (genetics). http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/may/18/non-white-british-population-ons But I thought it wasn't about foreigners existing, I thought it was about foreigners not assimilating and British culture being pushed to one side. What's more, this isn't even not-British, this is not-white, but still British. Are you seriously complaining that people aren't white enough these days, and are there any other goalposts you want to move, while you're at it?
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May 23, 2014 19:28
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SelfOM posted:No, but it disproves that there hasn't been change. A valid view for those so called 'aging' people. No-one said that there hasn't been a change in demographics, and the fact that there has been proves no other points that UKIP or any other party make, in and of itself. So I guess we're adding strawmen to the list now as well.
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May 23, 2014 19:48
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ThomasPaine posted:Not to be 'that guy' but there is every chance that their losses have nothing to do with their gender identity. You'll always get bigots of the kind you quote, but I like to think that most people aren't so stupid. Or, to be less optimistic, I think that most people vote for the party rather than the person. I've certainly never really bothered to look at the names for local elections, and just cast my vote based on party. I suppose the issue is more that there are so few trans candidates that it's perfectly possible for them to all lose, rather than it's bad that people voted against trans candidates. I wouldn't vote for a gay candidate unless they were a member of a party I supported. There are so few trans candidates because, really without geographical exception, it at best doesn't change the candidate's votes, but at worst significantly decreases it. Therefore parties are reluctant to nominate trans candidates, and trans people are reluctant to run for fear of a hateful and nasty campaign being run against them. Being told you're a terrible person because of a fact of your being is far worse than anything else 'normal' candidates will face during an election.
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May 23, 2014 20:04
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It seems the problem for Labour this elections was that they did fantastically well in London, and a bit below par in most of the rest of the country. Because a lot of London reports so late, it looked for almost the entirety of the election broadcasts that Labour were going to do poorly, but have ultimately ended up not far from their optimistic target, at 338 gains. I wonder if their PNS was redone with all the London results in if they wouldn't have a bit larger lead over the Tories, and if UKIP might not go even further down. But then that might not be how PNS is done, I don't really know anything about it.
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May 24, 2014 12:28
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Illuminti posted:Well this moved on a lot since I posted. Your statistic doesn't take into account that unlike all previous immigration waves, a huge proportion of EU immigrants stay and work here for a while, but then go home. This is the effect of a common market with freedom of movement, people moving country for a short time to work, not to make a new life like post-war immigrants did. Of course these immigrants don't integrate, but they also don't stay. I also don't agree that many people (of those who stay) don't integrate at all, or significantly less than previous immigrants. They do more than you know, and you can't know how much they have because you are not familiar with the culture of their previous country, or how much previous immigrants did. Every time we say 'this immigration wave is completely different to the previous ones, they won't integrate, they'll cause societal decay.' I also think we're ascribing many of the problems related to poverty to people's race. For many reasons, a large proportion of racial minorities are poor, we then instead attribute all the problems with civil unrest and crime that brings to their race or recent immigrant status. This has been a common tactic of the right, to blame systemic problems with capitalism on immigration. Alecto fucked around with this message at 13:33 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 13:28
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LemonDrizzle posted:Lord Ashcroft did some interesting post-election polling: http://www.conservativehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/LORD-ASHCROFT-POLLS-Post-Euro-Election-Poll-Summary-May-2014.pdf This is pretty consistent with pretty much all post-2010 polling on UKIP. It shouldn't be so hard to bring back Labour voters either, just pointing out that Farage and co are establishment Thatcherites will bring back the Midlands and Northern working class, and the rest is negligible. But, I'd rather they deal with the systemic party issues of an overly middle-class establishment and an insistence on neoliberal economic policies.
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May 24, 2014 13:38
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namesake posted:Literally every party commits/receives the benefit from postal vote fraud, it's hard NOT to. Indeed. I'm fairly sure that my Stalinist grandmother who died a week ago voted Conservative this election. Impossible to prove in this instance, but she's definitely marked as having voted, despite being way too far gone with dementia to make any decisions, so I suspect the care home made the decision for her. Which round here almost definitely means Conservative.
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May 24, 2014 14:16
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Illuminti posted:So even less likely to adopt and merge into British society then? Well yes, but it doesn't matter because they don't stay. Your figures are misleading because in the past, immigrants moved here and added to the long term population. A significant amount of European immigrants are staying for a while and then going home, they're not starting families, not establishing communities like 'normal' immigrants. Why should someone who's just going to work here for a few years properly integrate? Illuminti posted:I am interested in what you all think off the large amounts of Brits living in large clusters in Spain. Do you think they are integrating well, do you think they have benefited the regions they are in, bringing much needed diversity and colour? Would Barcelona feel Spanish if half it's population was German and English? The difference in the British migration to Spain is that it's not economic migration. Spain's economy is far worse than ours, there's very little reason for someone looking for a job to go to Spain. As such, Brits moving there are almost entirely elderly, or at least late middle-aged, people not in need of a job. Integration takes generations. But, because of their age, the British immigrants to Spain don't establish any more generations after them, they simply live there then die. They have no children who would have to learn Spanish to attend school, who would have Spanish friends and become slowly more immersed in Spanish culture, and in turn expose their parents to more Spanish culture. This is not the same kind of immigration we experience. Alecto fucked around with this message at 18:11 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 18:07
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Illuminti posted:I don't think the fact that they don't stay is irrelevant. If 200,000 europeans moved into Ipswich, it would change the culture of the place regardless of if they were going to leave in 5 years According to that source, only about 30% are of normal working age. So unless you can prove that the vast, vast majority of Brits there are not in any way integrating, then it would seem likely that the large proportion that don't is because almost 50% of the migrants, are, well, old. In contrast, barely over 10% of our immigrants are over the age of 56. Do you see how that might create a very different situation? If the whole of France moved into my living room I'd be a bit upset, but given that that's not going to happen I don't see a need to be worried about it. The validity of the alarmism about how many orders of magnitude more immigrants are coming than ever before is severely diminished because of the fact that they won't stay. You can't compare this type of immigration to previous because they are far less impactfull; they won't occupy houses for nearly as long, they won't use national services for nearly as long, they won't even use schools as they won't be here long enough to have children. So yes, the Europeans are here in far greater numbers than, say, the South Asians ever were, but in terms of impact, each South Asian is worth orders of magnitude more than many of the Europeans. Alecto fucked around with this message at 18:45 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 18:43
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