UK Politics: You Didn't See That Coming

[mormont]

Re: Milliband - I think he did OK, on a personal level. The Tory press were constantly going after him in a way not really seen since the Kinnock days (even, absurdly, having a go at his home decorating - 'would you vote for a man who has a kitchen like this?') But there's not much sign that the electorate bought it. Generally he was thought to have done OK in the debates, for example.

Where he went wrong, I think, was tactically. He was effectively bullied by the Tories into constantly hardening his stance against the SNP, which not only made him look bad, but actually reinforced the impression that the SNP were so inherently scary that English voters needed to vote tactically to keep them out of government (which, as I've said before, was a straw man - the SNP showed no signs at all of wanting to be in a UK government). If we look at the breakdown of results, this seems to have worked for the Tories - it simultaneously got out their core vote, dissuaded Tory defectors from voting UKIP, alienated the Labour party from the Scottish voters, and may well even have got some disaffected Lib Dems to vote Tory. It also drowned out the other core Labour messages.

But those core messages were part of the problem themselves. The get-out clause in 'ban exploitative zero-hours contracts' is right there in the slogan, and every Labour spokesman I heard simply refused to discuss what that actually meant, simply parroting it back over and over again. The stuff about hardworking families and the cost of living was better, but still, there wasn't much meat there. The pledge stone was embarrassing, but one thing that struck me was that some of the pledges were not only vague, but stuff that I had simply not heard Labour talking about to any significant degree prior to them being etched in stone. Which was a good example of how they just did not get a coherent message across.

UKIP - loathe him or like him, Farage was the best public face UKIP had. With him gone, and an EU referendum in the works, I think 12% may be the high water mark for UKIP. Where do they go from here, once the referendum is done with?

Clegg - what can I say? He screwed up. He misunderstood what his own party was about, and paid the price. David Cameron will be very grateful, I'm sure, because Nick Clegg was great for the Tories and a disaster for his own party.

Cameron can pat himself and his team on the back. The SNP can surely only gasp - even they had no ambitions of doing anything approaching this well. What it all means, we will have to wait and see.

[john]

Cameron is probably mildly less ridiculous than Milliband but there really isn't much in it. And I get the impression that most non tory voters feel more or less the same. So the leadership issue would have been a motivating factor but I'm not sure it's that big a deal. Personally, I voted Labour hoping for Coalition 2.0.

[MinDonner]

Labour, IMO, need to get back to their roots a bit. I refuse to believe that the swing to UKIP is all because of racism; especially in the northeast, it has to be a lot to do with the way Blair/Brown threw the working class under the bus in their drive to appeal to the City and the South. Farage provided a workable scapegoat with his pontificating about the Immigrant Menace, and as UKIP has been the only party really trying to build in working class appeal without being totally patronising, its not that surprising theyve had the boost. Miliband was really not the guy to reverse the process.

I did think his resignation speech was quite sad though; Ive not been a fan of the guy but that was probably the best speech hes done.

[Free Northman Reborn]

So is each Scottish seat made up of fewer voters then, than the average English seat?

How is it that the SNP can have something like 55 seats to the UKIP's 1, when UKIP has almost 3 times their number of votes?

[Commodore]

UKIP - loathe him or like him, Farage was the best public face UKIP had. With him gone, and an EU referendum in the works, I think 12% may be the high water mark for UKIP. Where do they go from here, once the referendum is done with?

Referendums have been promised before. I'll believe it when I see it.

[Fez]

So Cameron has his majority now, but only barely, and won't have the Lib Dem cushion of votes anymore. Presumably he'd like to go more right-wing than he was able to the last five years, but does he want to go as far as his hard-right back-benchers want? Or does he tack to a point where he reliably has the support of, say, three-quarters/four-fifths of his MPs but needs to pull in votes from other parties to pass most things?

[lessthanluke]

Is this the most un proportional election ever with regards to amount of MPs per vote cast?

[Commodore]

@Hugodixon 3 hrs
If UK had PR, UKIP would have 82 MPs, Greens 24 & SNP 32. In fact, UKIP gets 1, Greens 1, SNP 56. Really need to change voting system.

[Chaircat Meow]

So is each Scottish seat made up of fewer voters then, than the average English seat?

How is it that the SNP can have something like 55 seats to the UKIP's 1, when UKIP has almost 3 times their number of votes?

No. The SNP got near to 50% up here while UKIP would be on something like 14-15% in England and Wales outside of London. That's not enough to actually take any seats.

[Free Northman Reborn]

And is it as simple as saying that if the Yes vote won the Scottish referendum, Cameron would now have had 326 out of 591 seats, meaning 55% of the total?

[Slurms McKenzie]

Yeah FPTP is just... archaic. The house of Lords too need to be reformed.

[Commodore]

Nate Silver revealed to be nothing more than a glorified poll aggregator with nice visuals

[Free Northman Reborn]

So the answer then seems to be, it is not about how many voters you have, but rather how concentrated those voters are in densely packed pockets?

Meaning rather have all your voters living in a small area like Scotland, which could gather you 56 seats, instead of having 3 times as many voters scattered throughout England, resulting in only 1 seat?

[Chaircat Meow]

And is it as simple as saying that if the Yes vote won the Scottish referendum, Cameron would now have had 326 out of 591 seats, meaning 55% of the total?

Probably, but it seems like the fear of the SNP holding the balance of power helped Cameron in England.

So the answer then seems to be, it is not about how many voters you have, but rather how concentrated those voters are in densely packed pockets?

Meaning rather have all your voters living in a small area like Scotland, which could gather you 56 seats, instead of having 3 times as many voters scattered throughout England, resulting in only 1 seat?

Correct.

[Zoë Sumra]

So is each Scottish seat made up of fewer voters then, than the average English seat?

How is it that the SNP can have something like 55 seats to the UKIP's 1, when UKIP has almost 3 times their number of votes?

SNP didn't stand outside Scotland. UKIP stood throughout the mainland. You're right in your second post about voter concentration.

There's minimal chance the voting system will change because the Tories and Labour have too much to lose.

[Slurms McKenzie]

Labour, IMO, need to get back to their roots a bit. I refuse to believe that the swing to UKIP is all because of racism; especially in the northeast, it has to be a lot to do with the way Blair/Brown threw the working class under the bus in their drive to appeal to the City and the South. Farage provided a workable scapegoat with his pontificating about the Immigrant Menace, and as UKIP has been the only party really trying to build in working class appeal without being totally patronising, its not that surprising theyve had the boost. Miliband was really not the guy to reverse the process.

No, I think that's wrong. Labour lost the election in the marginals. UKIP bit into the majorities in the northeast but Labour still carried those seats. Labour just can't win from the left, they need to be center-left at best to win elections. Blair may have thrown the working class under the bus like you said, but he still won large majorities by appealing to the centre and middle class voters further south.

[Daeric]

That and the PR voting system referendum was billed as once in a generation thing, so unless something drastic happens we wont see it come up again for decades.

[mormont]

And is it as simple as saying that if the Yes vote won the Scottish referendum, Cameron would now have had 326 out of 591 seats, meaning 55% of the total?

No.

If Yes had won the referendum, that result would have dominated the UK General Election campaign and Cameron would have been constantly defending himself against the accusation that the breakup of Britain happened on his watch. He'd have lost a substantial amount of his vote to UKIP, who would have made hay with that angle. The narrative about Labour getting into bed with the SNP would not have been available to him. He'd have done much, much worse in England and Wales and we would have had a completely different field of battle, let alone result.

[Slurms McKenzie]

That and the PR voting system referendum was billed as once in a generation thing, so unless something drastic happens we wont see it come up again for decades.

Well, you could this election result as drastic maybe? Its spurred a lot of interest in PR

[Free Northman Reborn]

I am trying to compare this to the US Electoral College system. And it seems to me that while both have a separation between the popular and "Electoral College" vote, the difference is that in the US this impacts on a State level, while in the UK it is effectively on a "County" level, to use the US terminology.

And also, the US has fewer parties, thus limiting the impact of this system on the ultimate result.