8-Dec-2021 : LAB: 40 / CON: 34 / LDEM: 10 / GRN: 4

[Deleted]

Be great if Truss wins a leadership election.

She is - as Molesworth would correctly have observed - weedy.

[jib]

colin

"The latest survey of party members conducted by the Conservative Home website showed her ( Truss) as their favourite successor to Johnson, with Sunak second."

This reiterates my hunch that Sunak hasn't a cat's chance in the netherworld of persuading the Tory membership of making him leader.

Nice accountant type, there is no thing as an annoited future Tory leader!

[eor]

Dec 27, 2021 15:03:35 GMT shevii said:

Dec 27, 2021 13:17:31 GMT crossbat11 said:

Maybe it gathers potency and salience on the Left when two factors align; long periods of Tory government and the emergence of a more centrist Labour Party. This was the case in 1997 , when some anti Tory tactical voting was actually orchestrated, needlessly as it transpired, and it may be that 2024 sees it emerge significantly again. 14 years of Tory led governments by then and a Starmer led less socialist more social democratic Labour Party on electoral offer. In tabloid speak, is this a perfect storm for anti Tory tactical voting, I wonder??

I do think there is some potential in a centrist not scaring Tory voters whether they simply move to LD or all the way to Labour.  Corbyn got a vote share in 2017 which would normally have been enough to get a majority (Blair did this on 35% and Cameron did it on 37%) but he scared the horses and turnout increased from the other side as well. Also I have no doubt that Blair was the right person at the right time to get Labour a landslide.

Given the majority governments we've had in the last 50 years, I think your "normally" is doing some heavy lifting there. The only two majorities with support that low since the early 70s were when the LibDems were very unusually high - 40% is freakishly high in that time for the losing party in a majority government outcome, but it would also be unusually low for the winning one.

2019 - 44% vs 32%
2015 - 37% vs 30%
2005 - 35% vs 32%
2001 - 41% vs 31%
1997 - 43% vs 31%
1992 - 42% vs 34%
1987 - 42% vs 31%
1983 - 42% vs 28%
1979 - 44% vs 37%
1974 (oct) - 39% vs 36%

(all % as from Wikipedia)

[eor]

Dec 27, 2021 20:31:22 GMT James E said:

Dec 27, 2021 18:37:54 GMT steve said:

Alec

More hospitalization doesn't necessarily mean worse outcomes depends how Ill they become. I also noted that around a third of those in the latest data set in hospital with covid were first detected in hospital.

If you are in hospital because for example you broke your leg but are found to have covid seems a bit bizarre to count it as a covid case.

That's very interesting but do you have a source, Steve?

[Edit - and a time for the TW post that you are referring to, please   ]

That's also (the bold type part) not necessarily a helpful distinction in itself - it would apply to people in hospital for many random reasons but surely also to those who were admitted due to COVID-related issues who simply hadn't been tested prior to admission?

[eor]

Dec 27, 2021 20:49:33 GMT James E said:

eor

I think you should understand that not all 'MRP's are the same. YouGov's involves profiling each individual constituency, which produces some very varied results. Their 2017 MRP (with polling showing a 4-point Con lead) produced similar results to their general polling (which was around a 5 point Con lead, with smaller samples). So the accurcy of their 'interesting' constituency results was not the result of an unusual sample for the MRP.

Focaldata, though, appear to have done something very odd in Scotland and Wales, which has distorted their constituency results in the poll released 48 hours ago. Their figures for Scotland show the SNP on just 37%, 8 points below any Scottish Westminster poll in 2021, despite retaining 85% of their supporters from GE2019, where they got 45% of the votes cast in Scotland. I'm hoping that at some point they will explain or correct this.

I think you've misread my point a little - I meant that I think people latch onto MRP polling because it produces salacious constituency results (like Boris Johnson will lose his seat). And whilst I appreciate there are different models from different companies, I think it's fair to say that there is no clear evidence of projections immediately prior to recent GEs being at all accurate at translating the prevailing VI into seats. And thus it's reasonable to be sceptical now, even more so with a mid-term one.

[Deleted]

If Truss gets to a runoff v Sunak she will win.

[neilj]

The opinium poll discussed earlier

[neilj]

Not sure if this has been posted already

[crossbat11]

eor

Given the majority governments we've had in the last 50 years, I think your "normally" is doing some heavy lifting there. The only two majorities with support that low since the early 70s were when the LibDems were very unusually high - 40% is freakishly high in that time for the losing party in a majority government outcome, but it would also be unusually low for the winning one.



2019 - 44% vs 32%

2015 - 37% vs 30%

2005 - 35% vs 32%

2001 - 41% vs 31%

1997 - 43% vs 31%

1992 - 42% vs 34%

1987 - 42% vs 31%

1983 - 42% vs 28%

1979 - 44% vs 37%

1974 (oct) - 39% vs 36%



(all % as from Wikipedia)

Your list of GE results got me digging further and the 2010 one you omitted was an unusual one in a number of ways. Firstly, apart from Blair's third win in 2015, it was the lowest winning percentage vote share in post war history: 36% vs 29%. Secondly, it was a reminder of how anaemic a performance that was from the Tories and Cameron, following as it did 13 years of Labour government, the financial crash and Brown's dire personal ratings. Thirdly a reminder too of the Lib Dems high vote share vs low seat tally and the iniquity of FPTP. Brown's 29% got him 258 seats, Clegg's 23% got him 57. Cameron's 36% got him 306 and the keys to Downing Street - eventually!

Taken more in the round, it also illustrates how electorally weak the Tories were for such a long period. After Major's high watermark in 1992, their vote share went 31, 31, 32, 36 and 37 in five consecutive elections spanning 18 years. It took Brexit and the collapse (willingly) of UKIP to get them over 40% and into stable majority territory. They really were in the doldrums for some considerable time. Slowly improving but twitching upwards rather than soaring!

[oldnat]

Dec 27, 2021 13:11:54 GMT graham said:

Dec 27, 2021 12:59:35 GMT steve said:

"Were I living now in Wales or Scotland and faced with just Tory and Plaid or SNP candidates, I would unhesitatingly vote Tory."

That's a perfectly respectable position for a British Nationalist to take.

[eor]

Dec 27, 2021 16:41:19 GMT shevii said:

Dec 27, 2021 15:46:47 GMT mandolinist said:

Alec, I am not sure if you are playing games or my grammar was as bad as you suggest. I am a woman, who voted remain.

I was a bit puzzled by that Alec comment as well!

It seems he likes the occasional crack at people who obsess over trans issues. Not unreasonable in itself; as with any position, there are some with extreme sensitivity who'd frankly benefit from a bit of mocking. 

[eor]

Dec 27, 2021 21:46:17 GMT crossbat11 said:

eor

Given the majority governments we've had in the last 50 years, I think your "normally" is doing some heavy lifting there. The only two majorities with support that low since the early 70s were when the LibDems were very unusually high - 40% is freakishly high in that time for the losing party in a majority government outcome, but it would also be unusually low for the winning one.



2019 - 44% vs 32%

2015 - 37% vs 30%

2005 - 35% vs 32%

2001 - 41% vs 31%

1997 - 43% vs 31%

1992 - 42% vs 34%

1987 - 42% vs 31%

1983 - 42% vs 28%

1979 - 44% vs 37%

1974 (oct) - 39% vs 36%



(all % as from Wikipedia)

Your list of GE results got me digging further and the 2010 one you omitted was an unusual one in a number of ways. Firstly, apart from Blair's third win in 2015, it was the lowest winning percentage vote share in post war history: 36% vs 29%. Secondly, it was a reminder of how anaemic a performance that was from the Tories and Cameron, following as it did 13 years of Labour government, the financial crash and Brown's dire personal ratings. Thirdly a reminder too of the Lib Dems high vote share vs low seat tally and the iniquity of FPTP. Brown's 29% got him 258 seats, Clegg's 23% got him 57. Cameron's 36% got him 306 and the keys to Downing Street - eventually!

Taken more in the round, it also illustrates how electorally weak the Tories were for such a long period. After Major's high watermark in 1992, their vote share went 31, 31, 32, 36 and 37 in five consecutive elections spanning 18 years. It took Brexit and the collapse (willingly) of UKIP to get them over 40% and into stable majority territory. They really were in the doldrums for some considerable time. Slowly improving but twitching upwards rather than soaring!

I omitted 2010 for the simple reason that it didn't return a majority government  Same as I omitted 2017 and Feb 1974. 

Yes I agree 2010 was unusual, but I think the reasons you cite are very correlated. It was a low-water mark for CON/LAB in total (65% between them!) and very high point for LD but these are the same thing viewed from different angles. 

[crossbat11]

Dec 27, 2021 19:24:05 GMT colin said:

crossbat11

@"The political centre ground is probably the most diverse and interesting place in politics."

I agree.

In UK its a place where most people live and no political party exists. My own view is that the former begets the latter, most people having more pressing things to do than join political parties.

So its a place, in our political set up, where mistrust and suspicion abound in any party which attempts to govern from there.

So that's where Leadership is required .

I think you and I have always agreed to disagree about political parties and their value. I think they can become factional, ideologically skewed and often too introspective, but they are generally forces for good in terms of a functioning representative democracy. In our electoral system they can become ridiculously broad churches too, accommodating feuding and incompatible sects with little in common, but without them we would have a democratic highway but with no vehicles to drive on it. How else do you get to express the broad democratic will and give voters viable choices at election time?

I'm in favour of PR and with it I think the two old leviathans of British politics, the Tories and Labour, would splinter asunder on logical grounds. Smaller parties would blossom too. But we don't have PR and in FPTP the two Leviathans herd votes broadly centre right and centre left. One nation Toryism for me is centre ground with a rightwards tilt (popular at times) and Labour is centre ground with a leftward tilt (social democracy, which also can gain majority voter support). Both traditions can and do occupy the centre ground but, fascinatingly, natural political gravity can tweak that centre ground leftwards or rightwards depending on circumstances and the strength of political leadership at the time. Attlee yanked it leftwards and Thatcher rightwards. Most of the other leaders in between and afterwards have camped out and pitched flags on the new centre that they were bequeathed. Of course, I'm generalising terribly here, and it's more journalism than political science, but I do believe in the gist of what I am arguing. 45 years of electioneering have led me to these views. That said they may be mistaken.

I was once quite a hardened socialist, and I think there are still good and worthwhile things in that broad set of beliefs, but I'm much more inclined towards a social democratic view of the world now. I was persuaded by Wilson's argument that political progress is always gradualist in a pluralistic and democratic society (how could it be anything else if you want to take the majority with you? and, above all, politics' is the imperfect art of the possible.  To get the social democratic government I prefer, I campaign for and vote Labour because, in this imperfect democracy, I can see no other way.

But I could live, and have lived for many years, in a one nation Tory type world. Not my preference, but it is for many people. I can't live easily with Johnson and this Tory Government though. I'd like them out of office and Labour's my only show in town.

[eor]

Dec 27, 2021 17:08:09 GMT patrickbrian said:

Steve

"One of the primary reasons I left the labour party was I grew tired of being called a red Tory"

Quite. In my all too brief membership, I went to one meeting where i made the mistake of speaking up for Owen Jones (standing against Corbyn). The response was horrible, and the (perfectly nice) chair had to call the meeting to order. I never went to another meeting and soon left the Party. Many of those shouting me down were good people , but seemed to feel justified anger against anyone daring to express different views. I had the same experience in a "Devon for Europe" meeting chaired by Sarah Wollaston, where I dared to suggest that going for a second referendum might be counter-productive and maybe we should look for compromise. Why do political people always have to be so certain that their view is the only morally valid one? Puts a lot of us off.

To be fair, sticking up for Owen Jones is unlikely to get you into trouble in any CLP meeting. 

Owen Smith, who ran against Corbyn on the other hand... much more toxic!  

[eor]

Dec 27, 2021 17:15:54 GMT crossbat11 said:

I think there are some "creeping" straw men lurking here!

I don't know if we have an award for Confusing Metaphor of the Year but... 

[catfuzz]

Dec 27, 2021 19:58:27 GMT colin said:

From the G article mandolinist mentioned :-

"However, other potential leadership rivals the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, and the levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, fared worse than Johnson, with the former estimated to lose 40 more seats and the latter 70 seats more.!

and

"The latest survey of party members conducted by the Conservative Home website showed her ( Truss) as their favourite successor to Johnson, with Sunak second."

!

I would bet that there is a 6th of Jan ‘ephiphany’ on Truss with this poll now out there.

[jib]

oldnat

"That's a perfectly respectable position for a British Nationalist to take."

Absolutely well put. Voting Tory sounds like the only option for Graham to meet his desired outcome.

[shevii]

@ Eor

Fair point on the winning percentages although in my defence bring any of those winning percentages down to 41% and add onto the other side and you'd still have a majority nearly, if not always I think. But I've forgotten what my original point was now- it is clear that both brexit and Corbyn were polarising factors and prevented 41% being enough.

[oldnat]

Today is octidi 8 Nivôse in the year of the Republic CCXXX, celebrating manure.

Make up your own political joke.

[tancred]

Dec 27, 2021 15:46:47 GMT mandolinist said:

Tancred, I once voted LD, in a European election, just after the Iraq war. Even with Charles Kennedy as leader I felt somehow grubby.
Alec, I am not sure if you are playing games or my grammar was as bad as you suggest. I am a woman, who voted remain.

Why did you feel 'grubby'?  The LibDems are the most pro-EU of all parties!  

[leftieliberal]

James E eor I remember one of these MRP polls predicting that the Lib Dems would lose Orkney and Shetland and the BBC majoring on it. It turned out that they had polled very few people north of Inverness. While for conventional opinion polling one looks for an even geographical distribution of respondents with the right overall distribution of age, occupation, and education, for MRP polling you don't have a sample that is representative of the population, but you correct for this by using other information about the people you are sampling. Here is a New Scientist article on it: www.newscientist.com/article/2224783-what-is-mrp-and-can-it-predict-the-result-of-the-uk-general-election/ Note in particular the last paragraph from Peter Kellner, who should know something about polling.

I also remember Matt Singh of Number Cruncher Politics getting the 2015 GE result almost spot-on, but he has not been significantly better than other pollsters since. I think that the jury is still out on MRP and we may well find that there are systematic errors in it that are not corrected. We all know not to put much faith in sub-samples of conventional polls, even aggregated sub-samples over several polls, because the sub-samples are not balanced for the population of that area as a whole.

[bantams]

Dec 27, 2021 23:16:49 GMT oldnat said:

Today is octidi 8 Nivôse in the year of the Republic CCXXX, celebrating manure.

Make up your own political joke.

Not political but a gag by the late great Dave Allen:

A child wakes up on Christmas morning and is surprised to find a heap of horse manure under the tree instead of his usual collection of presents. Yet, the child is not discouraged because he has an extraordinarily optimistic outlook on life. His parents discover him enthusiastically shovelling the manure and when they ask him why he exclaims, “With all this manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere!”

[Deleted]

Some big differences[1] between R&W (approval) and YG (favourability) for next CON leader hopefuls but FWIW then gen.pub view R&W / YG

(The Incumbetent Boris: -29 / -46 )
Rishi: +11 / -5
Saj: -2 / -23
Truss: -8 / -20
Raab: na / -39
Goke: na / -44
Patel: -34 / -53

Neither poll for Hunt or Mordaunt, also I doubt Patel or Raab but including them as we have polling info on them. I'd be OK with Saj. CON x-breaks possibly more relevant but I would hope+expect a lot of CON MPs and members back someone they think could win a GE (even if, as per Boris in 2019, that would take a nose peg and not necessarily be the 'best' long-term choice - as has become obvious WRT to Boris who 'Got Brexit Done' but is not the leader/PM we need right now or into next GE)

[1] Approve is IMO the better question as that reflects their job performance (IMO). We see the same for LAB folks so that is not a partisan comment.

R&W info from their twitter feed. YG data:
docs.cdn.yougov.com/lzye7eucj7/Main_FavourabilityTracker_W.pdf

[crossbat11]

Dec 27, 2021 22:18:00 GMT eor said:

Dec 27, 2021 17:15:54 GMT crossbat11 said:

I think there are some "creeping" straw men lurking here!

I don't know if we have an award for Confusing Metaphor of the Year but... 

It was a tongue in cheek reference to Shevii's description of "my creeping assumption" in his reply to an earlier post of mine.

In a literal sense it was nonsensical and just a bit of an in joke. No metaphor was attempted, nor was it borrowed!

[steve]

Oldnat
It might be a perfectly reasonable position for a British nationalist to take it wouldn't be mine.
Unless I was living in a seat in Scotland winnable for Labour or lib dems I would probably vote snp.
Frankly nationalism of any form has little interest for me but the snp seem to be an adequate government.

[thexterminatingdalek]

I'm surprised that many potential voters have sufficient recognition of Truss to hold such strong opinions about her.

Even as an unreconstructed political anorak, she's barely registered on my radar other than clips from speeches about cheese and pork, and looking like a Cbeebies TV presenter.

[oldnat]

Dec 27, 2021 23:23:02 GMT leftieliberal said:

even aggregated sub-samples over several polls, because the sub-samples are not balanced for the population of that area as a whole.

That assertion might be judged for some pollsters if they also run Full Scottish polls by the extent to which the aggregated average differ from their Full Scottish ones (whether results are similar for other geographical regions in GB polls, I know not).

YG Full Scottish 22 Nov

SNP 48% : SCon 20% : SLab 18% : SLD 6% : SGP 3%

YG 7 poll crossbreak average at 18 Nov

SNP 46% : SCon 21% : SLab 17% : SLD 7% : SGP 4%

I don't make exaggerated claims for the aggregated averages, but they can give a guide which is within moe. I find them useful - but to be used with even more care than a "proper" poll.

If anyone was interested, I could do a similar analysis for any other pollster who does Full Scottish polls.

[graham]

Dec 27, 2021 21:55:59 GMT oldnat said:

Dec 27, 2021 13:11:54 GMT graham said:

"Were I living now in Wales or Scotland and faced with just Tory and Plaid or SNP candidates, I would unhesitatingly vote Tory."

That's a perfectly respectable position for a British Nationalist to take.

It is a very respectable position for an Anti-Nationalist to take.

During World War 2 there were members of both Plaid Cymru and the SNP who expressed pro - German sympathies.

[oldnat]

Dec 27, 2021 23:59:20 GMT steve said:

Oldnat
It might be a perfectly reasonable position for a British nationalist to take it wouldn't be mine.
Unless I was living in a seat in Scotland winnable for Labour or lib dems I would probably vote snp.
Frankly nationalism of any form has little interest for me but the snp seem to be an adequate government.

However, no one suggested that you are a British Nationalist, so your voting patterns are likely to be different from Graham's.

Being entirely unconcerned about the units of government which you live under is also a perfectly respectable stance to take. That you would be unconcerned as to whether you lived in a centralised pan European state, some form of federalised structure which might or might not include a UK component but with some or all of its constituent parts, or a state (UK, England or whatever) hell bent on minimising commonality with its neighbours would seem odd to me, but each to their own.

[Deleted]

Dec 27, 2021 23:16:49 GMT oldnat said:

Today is octidi 8 Nivôse in the year of the Republic CCXXX, celebrating manure.

Make up your own political joke.

That’s a shit fact.