11-AUG 2023 : LAB: 48% / CON: 24% / LDM: 10% / GRN: 6%

[steve]

GOP first debate Lincoln project style.

youtu.be/XJBjqxdutYg

[James E]

Aug 22, 2023 16:05:32 GMT neilj said:

Redfield & Wilton Strategies
Labour leads by 25% in the Red Wall.

Red Wall VI (6 August):

Labour 53% (+4)
Conservative 28% (–)
Reform UK 7% (-1)
Liberal Democrat 6% (-2)
Green 4% (–)
Plaid Cymru 1% (-1)
Other 1% (–)

Changes +/- 6 August

That's a 17% swing on GE2019, so a couple of points more than the current average of 14-15, but these R&W 'Red Wall' polls have often produced 4-5 point movements, which have proved mostly to be just 'noise'. The norm seems to be that they vary around the prevailing Con to Lab swing, perhaps in recent months a little above, whereas previously a little below. 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#Other_polling
(scroll down a bit on the wiki link for their Red wall polls, fortnightly since June 2022)

[moby]

Aug 22, 2023 11:23:42 GMT Mr Poppy said:

I don't know if anyone falls for Starmer's 'hard luck' story. We all know his dad was good at making tools though 

Anyway, he's winding the Genuine LoCs up again with his latest vacuous comments: totally devoid of facts (eg a lot more 'disadvanatged'* people go to Uni now than when he had to 'tough it out' at Leeds back in his day) and obviously devoid of any policy announcement (which would be an 'O'-turn** given he's already 'U-turned' and broken the pledge to scrap Uni fees)

* See "There have been continued increases in entry rates for different groups of students, including those from disadvantaged areas/backgrounds where rates have also hit new record levels."
commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7857/
In terms of %s then 'White Males' are one of the lowest %s and if anyone wants to discuss the finer details then I'd suggest the 'Education' thread given it seems unlikely either main party are going to make any further significant changes (noting CON HMG have moved away from the stupid (IMO) 50% target that Blair set)

** Folks who want Corbyn's GE'19 manifesto and Starmer's 10 pledges (before he ripped them up) can vote Green if they want to. Greens would abolish Uni fees
Students pay a heavy price from latest Starmer U-turn say Greens
www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2023/05/03/students-pay-a-heavy-price-from-latest-starmer-u-turn-say-greens/
NB Before the trolls get going then note I'm fine with the current system and think we should be deterring people from taking 'Micky Mouse' degrees that leave then £50k in debt with low job prospects. If you want to become an Engineer, Doctor or even a lawyer then you can easily repay a student loan who you start work and hence if you want to go to Uni to do a 'proper' degree then taxpayers will loan you the money to invest in yourself. Seems a good approach IMO. 

THe Guardian has lots of quotes from people who agree with Starmer:-
I think Starmer’s claim has a lot of truth. As a parent of two children nearing university age, I think he has a very good point – the problem is the living cost, especially rents for university as the amount that can be loaned for living costs doesn’t cover the costs ( it hasn’t been increased in line with cost of living) so relies on parents having some money spare.



Another said:



I’d regard myself as an ‘aspirational parent’ but with accommodation prices out of control and 40-year loans, my son has decided to try his luck in the workplace in the hope that Labour may make it easier to go to university. I can barely afford my own rent in Manchester, let alone the obscene £800 a month the University of Birmingham charge for an en-suite room.



AverageBod said:



If I was faced with the cost of university today, I am not sure I could go. I am in the lucky position of being able to cover the shortfall for my children, but my parents could not have done that for me. The cost of rent is barely covered, leaving virtually nothing for anything else.



And plastic666 asked:



Where in the UK is it possible to get accommodation of the legally decent standard which is less than the available loans and grant provided to the students from the poorest backgrounds?



Another point is that, even if more people are going to university now, their university experience is not the same as it was for people like Starmer in the 1980s.



One reader said:



While you are right to say that large numbers of working-class/less wealthy students have not been turned off university by tuition fees, their university experience has completely changed.



Many/most of my students now have to work full-time hours in retail jobs to be able to afford university accommodation, food and bills. They are rarely getting the full university experience of the extracurricular activities, like participating in societies, clubs, and career-orientated social events that provide the extra social and cultural capital that enables them to enter professions like the law.



And several people argued that, even if teenagers are not being deterred from going to university, the situation has got much harder for mature students.



KateKingWarwickshire said:



Starmer is right, of course. I’ve mentioned it before, but I left school at 16 with no exams, and went out to work straight away as a typist. In my thirties I got day release to do O and A levels, no money required by me, got a load of straight A’s, applied to Oxford, sat an entrance exam for the college I applied to, and got one of the last grants Warwickshire was handing out, and went up to Oxford as a mature student. That was in 1990! Universities may have *some* bursaries, and there may be *some* help for poorer students. But that chance I had would never be available now.



Onunglown said:



I was at uni in the late 60s I could count on the fingers of one hand those who did not receive a full grant. Later in life, in the 80s, I studied part-time, but by attending law [school] and got a second degree. Had to pay £200 a year fees for second degree but still hugely subsidised. Then went to Leeds Poly for solicitors finals course [on a] full grant. At that time was married with 2 children. Today that would not happen.



And another reader said:



It is probably true that Starmer would still be going to uni if he were 18 today, but that isn’t the same for everyone. Education today is a far more hostile environment then it was during my parents’ era.



For starters adult education doesn’t exist and with the obliteration of BTEC and other level 3 qualifications there is now an age barrier to education. In my area colleges state that over-20s can’t do A levels. Also, for students who don’t get their GCSEs first time, there are no colleges that do five GCSEs, meaning there is no ladder of progression.



Before the T level introduction there was a route in doing BTEC level 2s but these are also becoming difficult because of the pre-T level introduction. Anyone over the age of 19 is automatically denied from T levels as it is stated that they are 16-18.

[steve]

Trevor
"I don't know if anyone falls for Starmer's 'hard luck' story. We all know his dad was good at making tools though"

That could be said of the fathers of some people here as well!

[alec]

steve - this is probably a case of mistaken identity. 'Common cold' are normally taken as one of the dozens of rhinoviruses, that are so mild they don't even create an adaptive immune system response (eg no antibodies, no immune response). This is what 'the common cold' actually means, and no, they very rarely prove fatal.

There are many other viruses that usually cause cold like symptoms, like RSV, and these can indeed be serious, but these shouldn't be referred to as common colds. They should be referred to as 'RSV', or whatever.

[James E]

A 25 point Labour lead with Deltapoll. It's their equal-largest lead so far this year, and their first 'Lab 50' since March.

That's 8 points higher than the last Delta, but they have a habit of moving in the opposite direction to other pollsters.

Lab 50%
Con 25%
LibDem 9%
Green 7%
Ref 4%
SNP 3%
UKIP 1%
oth 1%

Fieldwork 17-21 Aug.

deltapoll.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Deltapoll-230821_trackers.pdf

10-poll average of all polls now around 19%.

[graham]

Aug 22, 2023 16:16:15 GMT Mr Poppy said:

Aug 22, 2023 15:04:49 GMT c-a-r-f-r-e-w said:

interesting point. So is there a trend for the green vote to become less lumpy or not? 

Just FWIW then the UKIP'15* vote was fairly lumpy but perhaps CCHQ 'remembered' that better into GE'19 than LAB HQ? Loads of sites people could use but IIRC then UKPR2 types like the Groan so can use the below and select UKIP in the drop down box to see the different shadings of purple at a seat level. 

www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2015/may/07/live-uk-election-results-in-full

The 'hypothesis' WRT to Greens is for the future. Historically they have often 'squeezed' into voting LAB at a GE and that MIGHT not always be the case in the future. See: "No guarantee Green voters will row behind Labour at the election"

labourlist.org/2023/08/labour-green-party-general-election-tactical-voting-progressive-alliance/

So 'trend' is IMO the wrong thing to be trying to find as the issue is a break with the past 'lending' of votes. In terms of 'councillors' then Greens are quite lumpy and they don't post a candidate in every seat in a GE (which makes them look lumpy). Could use EP elections as a proxy for a 'free' vote but huge caveats on doing that as EP uses D'Hondt for regions and GEs are FPTP (which gets back to the issue of 'lending' votes - or not).

Chris Hanretty does lots of spreadsheets with results from various elections that people can 'copy+paste' and use for their own prediction models. See the downloadable file "European Parliament election 2019 results by Westminster constituency"

www.markpack.org.uk/159014/european-parliament-election-results-2019-broken-down-by-westminster-constituency/

Anyone with fairly basic spreadsheet skills can 'sort' any of the columns and see that Hanretty has credited Greens with gaining anything from 3% in Rhondda to 45% in Bristol West (ie lumpy, as per other parties) - certainly enough to 'split' the ABCON vote in enough seats to get LAB to pay attention to Green issues.

NB I'm not saying the EP numbers are a 'prediction' just that there is a lot of data out there that people can choose to use to look at 'scenarios' - or not. 

* BXP'19a (ie EP) vote was also lumpy and you didn't need to be a genius to be able to sort Hanretty's data, spot the 'marginal' target seats that needed to be won in GE'19 as they were pretty much the same seats that May failed to win in GE'17 (when people could have used the 'better' data of UKIP'15 vote share by seat). Why did LAB HQ not notice the Leave'16 vote was the 'marginal' vote to win in GE'19 given they did so well in GE'17 when Corbyn had said 'Brexit is settled'? One wonders, with good reason, whether a lot of the people within LAB never wanted to win GE'19 as the only way to get rid of Corbyn and crush the LW-LAB was to see Corbyn-LAB lose badly in a GE. Just an inspired guess!

The data referred to by Mark Pack re- the late May 2019 EP elections illustrates how almost meaningless those results were in terms of predicting GE results less than seven months later - never mind wasting time analysing them for clues as to likely 2024 outcomes!

To take three results from May 2019 -

Bristol West  Green 24849

                     LD     13391

                     Lab      6764

                    BxtP     4466     

                    Con      1482

Dec 2019 result -

                  Lab     47028   

                 Green  18809

                  Con      8822

                  BxtP       869     

This seat has been touted as a serious prospect for the Greens in 2024, but such hopes are not likely to be realised when the outcome in those elections is compared. Even with the LDs standing aside to support the Greens , the Labour vote increased massively from a poor 3rd place to a landslide victory.

Cambridge    May 2019

                 LD   15492

                Grn    8884

                Brx    4523

                Lab    4338

                Con   1317

Dec 2019 result -

               Lab   25776

               LD    16137

               Con    8342

               Grn     2164

               Brx     1041

Labour jumped from a poor 4th place to win comfortably over the LDs. This was certainly a seat Jo Swinson had in mind when informing the country that she was the LD's 'candidate for PM.'

Norwich South  May 2019 -

                    Gren   8302

                    LD      7811

                    Bxt     5988

                    Lab     4155

                    Con    1577

Dec 2019 result

                  Lab   27766

                  Con  15006

                   LD     4776

                  Grn    2469

                   Bxt   1656

Again Labour support increases massively to see an easy win over the Tories - even though the latter has enjoyed a huge increase in its vote compared with May. Support for the three leading candidates at the May EP election has pretty well collapsed.

I suggest that these results highlight how support for certain minor parties is 'easy come - easy go' - even when a relatively short time period of less than seven months was involved. On the same basis , relying on Local Election results to predict a GE result in a particular constituency is likely to be hazardous in the extreme. At a GE people vote in much greater numbers with very different considerations in mind. Such caution should also be extended to interpretation of Parliamentary by election results.

[pjw1961]

Aug 22, 2023 15:04:49 GMT c-a-r-f-r-e-w said:

Aug 22, 2023 14:47:29 GMT pjw1961 said:

Re the Greens and Labour. I am not sure that the Greens are an electoral threat to Labour in the same way that UKIP was to the Conservatives (or at least was perceived to be). The UKIP vote was fairly evenly distributed across England and parts of Wales, so the risk for the Tories was of it taking enough votes that they lost seats to Labour (actually UKIP ate into the Labour vote too, which Tory HQ sort of ignored in their panic to placate those voters).

In contrast the Green vote is quite 'lumpy' with areas of great strength and others where they are largely absent. This actually gives them a better chance of winning Westminster seats than UKIP had, but makes them less of a generic threat outside of their strong areas.

interesting point. So is there a trend for the green vote to become less lumpy or not? 

Before answering that, I notice that Trevor is disputing that the UKIP 2015 vote was relatively evenly spread, resulting in their inability to win more than one seat despite a large vote. In making that claim he is in dispute with pretty universal psephological opinion. Since John Curtice is UKPR2's favorite psephologist, I will quote him on the subject: 

"If a party's vote is relatively evenly spread, the system will indeed reward a smaller party with few if any seats, as it means it will secure a relatively small share of the vote everywhere. On the other hand, if a smaller party's vote is concentrated in particular constituencies, then it may be rewarded quite handsomely by the system.

The contingent and thus potentially very varied way in which the system treats smaller parties was amply illustrated by the 2015 election. The system did more or less exclude some parties. UKIP, which came third in votes across the UK as a whole, ended up (along with the sixth placed Greens) coming equal 10th (behind four Northern Irish parties as well as the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats) in terms of seats. It was the party that came fifth in votes, the SNP, that succeeded in becoming the third largest party in the House of Commons. The crucial difference between the two parties was that UKIP's vote was for the most part relatively evenly spread, whereas support for the SNP was, of course, confined to constituencies in Scotland.

UKIP's success in winning nearly 13% of the vote in Great Britain was truly remarkable. It was the first time since the advent of the Conservative–Labour duopoly in 1922 that the Liberal Democrats (and before them the Liberal party) had been usurped in a UK General Election from their position as the third most popular party in terms of votes. It confirmed UKIP's position as the most significant wholly independent fourth-party challenge in English politics. But the party was rewarded with just one seat, the Clacton berth of the locally popular defector from the Conservative Party, Douglas Carswell. At 6.2, the standard deviation of its support across constituencies was noticeably much less than that of the Liberal Democrats (8.4). The party only managed to win more than a quarter of the vote in 16 constituencies, and came a close second (i.e., within 10% of the winner) in just two."

academic.oup.com/pa/article/68/suppl_1/25/1403168
 

[graham]

Aug 22, 2023 17:07:11 GMT Mr Poppy said:

Aug 22, 2023 16:57:32 GMT graham said:

That data is already rather old given that the pollster has published two further national polls since 6th August!

!?!? The fieldwork is 20Aug (I hope I don't get into trouble for making the correction in the above, the typo was made by R&W in their twitter post). I don't think anyone on UKPR2 expects %s at a seat level to move in a perfectly UNS/PNS way and hence whilst folks might pick some fault in the specific sample of 'Red Wall' seats that R&W pick and 'one poll caveat', etc then IMO it is useful to see FRESH polling of a subset of seats that are an indication of likely changes in an area that LAB need to win (and CON need to hold most of).

R&W don't weight their regional x-breaks and even those that do (eg YG) have small regional samples so high MoE. R&W's 'Red Wall' poll has n=1,066 which is pretty decent. 

Fair enough - but it still looks a bit odd in the context of Labour's national lead falling back from 20% to 15%. These figures appear to be moving the other way!

[Mr Poppy]

Aug 22, 2023 17:59:49 GMT graham said:

Aug 22, 2023 16:16:15 GMT Mr Poppy said:

..The 'hypothesis' WRT to Greens is for the future. Historically they have often 'squeezed' into voting LAB at a GE and that MIGHT not always be the case in the future. See: "No guarantee Green voters will row behind Labour at the election"

labourlist.org/2023/08/labour-green-party-general-election-tactical-voting-progressive-alliance/

So 'trend' is IMO the wrong thing to be trying to find as the issue is a break with the past 'lending' of votes. In terms of 'councillors' then Greens are quite lumpy and they don't post a candidate in every seat in a GE (which makes them look lumpy). Could use EP elections as a proxy for a 'free' vote but huge caveats on doing that as EP uses D'Hondt for regions and GEs are FPTP (which gets back to the issue of 'lending' votes - or not).
...

NB I'm not saying the EP numbers are a 'prediction' just that there is a lot of data out there that people can choose to use to look at 'scenarios' - or not. 

The data referred to by Mark Pack re- the late May 2019 EP elections illustrates how almost meaningless those results were in terms of predicting GE results less than seven months later 

"No Shit Sherlock". It was quite a long 7mths between PM Maybot into EP'19 and then PM Boris working out which voters he needed to win GE'19. Perhaps read my post next time. I'm very aware that Greens have often been squeezed into voting LAB in the PAST and I'm not saying.. (well, read what I actually wrote) 

[Mr Poppy]

Aug 22, 2023 18:03:11 GMT graham said:

Aug 22, 2023 17:07:11 GMT Mr Poppy said:

!?!? The fieldwork is 20Aug (I hope I don't get into trouble for making the correction in the above, the typo was made by R&W in their twitter post). I don't think anyone on UKPR2 expects %s at a seat level to move in a perfectly UNS/PNS way and hence whilst folks might pick some fault in the specific sample of 'Red Wall' seats that R&W pick and 'one poll caveat', etc then IMO it is useful to see FRESH polling of a subset of seats that are an indication of likely changes in an area that LAB need to win (and CON need to hold most of).

R&W don't weight their regional x-breaks and even those that do (eg YG) have small regional samples so high MoE. R&W's 'Red Wall' poll has n=1,066 which is pretty decent. 

Fair enough - but it still looks a bit odd in the context of Labour's national lead falling back from 20% to 15%. These figures appear to be moving the other way!

One poll caveat but I wouldn't be surprised to see a 'subset' of some seats (eg Red Wall) see a very different swing to the national swing, hence why IMO seeing 'subset' polling is useful to see.

[graham]

Aug 22, 2023 18:08:37 GMT Mr Poppy said:

Aug 22, 2023 17:59:49 GMT graham said:

The data referred to by Mark Pack re- the late May 2019 EP elections illustrates how almost meaningless those results were in terms of predicting GE results less than seven months later 

"No Shit Sherlock". It was quite a long 7mths between PM Maybot into EP'19 and then PM Boris working out which voters he needed to win GE'19. Perhaps read my post next time. I'm very aware that Greens have often been squeezed into voting LAB in the PAST and I'm not saying.. (well, read what I actually wrote) 

I am sorry but the 2019 EP election results were hardly worth the paper they were written on at the time they were released.Moreover, they have never have amounted to anything meaningful beyond giving a boost to Farage and UKIP/Bxt Party. The LDs and Greens were naive enough to take them at face value - whilst ignoring what had happened in the past.The huge jump in the Labour vote was significant because it occurred despite a very poor labour result nationally. Had Labour then actually been in the ascendant as is the case today - and was true in 2017 - the pattern revealed would have been even more obvious.

[pjw1961]

Aug 22, 2023 15:04:49 GMT c-a-r-f-r-e-w said:

Aug 22, 2023 14:47:29 GMT pjw1961 said:

Re the Greens and Labour. I am not sure that the Greens are an electoral threat to Labour in the same way that UKIP was to the Conservatives (or at least was perceived to be). The UKIP vote was fairly evenly distributed across England and parts of Wales, so the risk for the Tories was of it taking enough votes that they lost seats to Labour (actually UKIP ate into the Labour vote too, which Tory HQ sort of ignored in their panic to placate those voters).

In contrast the Green vote is quite 'lumpy' with areas of great strength and others where they are largely absent. This actually gives them a better chance of winning Westminster seats than UKIP had, but makes them less of a generic threat outside of their strong areas.

interesting point. So is there a trend for the green vote to become less lumpy or not? 

The problem with answering this is that it is only recently that the Greens have started to field enough candidates to form a proper judgement. One thing we can say is that when the Greens had their great triumph in the 1989 Euro elections, winning 14.5% of the national vote, their vote was very evenly spread. Unfortunately for them the Euros were still FPTP then, so as a result they won no seats. 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_European_Parliament_election_in_the_United_Kingdom

From local election results and recent GE's, the Green vote does look lumpy but with the caveat that the lumps may be spreading as the Greens are successful in more local council areas - like Forest of Dean or Mid Suffolk for example. But there is no real evidence for a general, across the board rise in Green voting. Of course the next GE may change that; my feeling is it won't, but that is only a personal view, I don't claim to be certain. The polling evidence putting the Greens on c6-7% of the national vote, given we know they will be able to poll a lot more than that in a few seats, does suggest that it they ran candidates everywhere there would be many seats where they could only expect to get c3%.  

[pjw1961]

Aug 22, 2023 18:19:50 GMT graham said:

Aug 22, 2023 18:08:37 GMT Mr Poppy said:

"No Shit Sherlock". It was quite a long 7mths between PM Maybot into EP'19 and then PM Boris working out which voters he needed to win GE'19. Perhaps read my post next time. I'm very aware that Greens have often been squeezed into voting LAB in the PAST and I'm not saying.. (well, read what I actually wrote) 

I am sorry but the 2019 EP election results were hardly worth the paper they were written on at the time they were released.Moreover, they have never have amounted to anything meaningful beyond giving a boost to Farage and UKIP/Bxt Party. The LDs and Greens were naive enough to take them at face value - whilst ignoring what had happened in the past.The huge jump in the Labour vote was significant because it occurred despite a very poor labour result nationally. Had Labour then actually been in the ascendant as is the case today - and was true in 2017 - the pattern revealed would have been even more obvious.

Agreed. People voted differently in Euro elections and a Westminster GE, as different issues mattered and different things were at stake. Similar caveats apply to Westminster by-elections and all forms of local elections. They can tell you something, but must be handled with care and its not worth reading too much into them. 

[leftieliberal]

Aug 22, 2023 17:59:49 GMT graham said:

Aug 22, 2023 16:16:15 GMT Mr Poppy said:

I suggest that these results highlight how support for certain minor parties is 'easy come - easy go' - even when a relatively short time period of less than seven months was involved. On the same basis , relying on Local Election results to predict a GE result in a particular constituency is likely to be hazardous in the extreme. At a GE people vote in much greater numbers with very different considerations in mind. Such caution should also be extended to interpretation of Parliamentary by election results.

The biggest factor in the 2019 EP elections was that the UK had voted to leave the EU in 2016, so the EP elections were just a 'free hit'. Not surprisingly the two big winners were Nigel Farage's Brexit party winning 29 seats and the Lib Dems winning 16. Also European Union citizens resident in the UK could vote, unlike in General Elections, so the two are not comparable. I don't disagree that Jo Swinson was delusional about the Lib Dems true level of support in a General Election.

[jib]

Aug 22, 2023 18:19:50 GMT graham said:

Aug 22, 2023 18:08:37 GMT Mr Poppy said:

"No Shit Sherlock". It was quite a long 7mths between PM Maybot into EP'19 and then PM Boris working out which voters he needed to win GE'19. Perhaps read my post next time. I'm very aware that Greens have often been squeezed into voting LAB in the PAST and I'm not saying.. (well, read what I actually wrote) 

I am sorry but the 2019 EP election results were hardly worth the paper they were written on at the time they were released.Moreover, they have never have amounted to anything meaningful beyond giving a boost to Farage and UKIP/Bxt Party. The LDs and Greens were naive enough to take them at face value - whilst ignoring what had happened in the past.The huge jump in the Labour vote was significant because it occurred despite a very poor labour result nationally. Had Labour then actually been in the ascendant as is the case today - and was true in 2017 - the pattern revealed would have been even more obvious.

Agree with this. Whilst not "preparing for Government" the Lib Dems thought they were going to hold the balance of power.

[Mr Poppy]

Aug 22, 2023 18:19:50 GMT graham said:

Aug 22, 2023 18:08:37 GMT Mr Poppy said:

"No Shit Sherlock". It was quite a long 7mths between PM Maybot into EP'19 and then PM Boris working out which voters he needed to win GE'19. Perhaps read my post next time. I'm very aware that Greens have often been squeezed into voting LAB in the PAST and I'm not saying.. (well, read what I actually wrote) 

I am sorry but the 2019 EP election results were hardly worth the paper they were written on at the time they were released.Moreover, they have never have amounted to anything meaningful beyond giving a boost to Farage and UKIP/Bxt Party. The LDs and Greens were naive enough to take them at face value - whilst ignoring what had happened in the past.The huge jump in the Labour vote was significant because it occurred despite a very poor labour result nationally. Had Labour then actually been in the ascendant as is the case today - and was true in 2017 - the pattern revealed would have been even more obvious.

Once again might I suggest you actually read my post. Yes, I remember Swinson (LDEM) getting very excited about the EP'19 results and calling herself 'PM in waiting' - it was quite an amusing time for a Vote.Leave person like me/myself/I. 

Your welcome to check the large move in national VI polls that occurred in the 7mths between EP'19 and GE'19 and (read my posts) to see which party realised which voters (in which seats) they needed to Vote.Leave (for a second time, arguably third but Corbyn did say Brexit was settled into GE'17).

The start of the discussion was about Greens and I'm not 'predicting' how they will do - just that there is some data available at a seat specific level which shows they are quite lumpy (as are all parties to varying extents).

The issue is the 'assumption' that voters will be squeezed into a main party into a GE. I'd quite happily also say that RUK might not 'squeeze' into CON this time but IMO it is quite clear that CCHQ are scared (overly scared?) about that risk and hence RUK are able to exert a lot of influence with zero MPs (now and probably zero after GE'24 as well). 

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

Aug 22, 2023 18:20:27 GMT pjw1961 said:

Aug 22, 2023 15:04:49 GMT c-a-r-f-r-e-w said:

interesting point. So is there a trend for the green vote to become less lumpy or not? 

The problem with answering this is that it is only recently that the Greens have started to field enough candidates to form a proper judgement. One thing we can say is that when the Greens had their great triumph in the 1989 Euro elections, winning 14.5% of the national vote, their vote was very evenly spread. Unfortunately for them the Euros were still FPTP then, so as a result they won no seats. 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_European_Parliament_election_in_the_United_Kingdom

From local election results and recent GE's, the Green vote does look lumpy but with the caveat that the lumps may be spreading as the Greens are successful in more local council areas - like Forest of Dean or Mid Suffolk for example. But there is no real evidence for a general, across the board rise in Green voting. Of course the next GE may change that; my feeling is it won't, but that is only a personal view, I don't claim to be certain. The polling evidence putting the Greens on c6-7% of the national vote, given we know they will be able to poll a lot more than that in a few seats, does suggest that it they ran candidates everywhere there would be many seats where they could only expect to get c3%.  

Thanks PJ. Be interesting to see how much Green stuff Labour actually deliver and how much this affects Green Party prospects. . 

[Mr Poppy]

Aug 22, 2023 18:32:56 GMT jib said:

Aug 22, 2023 18:19:50 GMT graham said:

I am sorry but the 2019 EP election results were hardly worth the paper they were written on at the time they were released.Moreover, they have never have amounted to anything meaningful beyond giving a boost to Farage and UKIP/Bxt Party. The LDs and Greens were naive enough to take them at face value - whilst ignoring what had happened in the past.The huge jump in the Labour vote was significant because it occurred despite a very poor labour result nationally. Had Labour then actually been in the ascendant as is the case today - and was true in 2017 - the pattern revealed would have been even more obvious.

Agree with this. Whilst not "preparing for Government" the Lib Dems thought they were going to hold the balance of power.

Swinson was a bit more ambitious than previous/current LDEM leaders:

Jo Swinson plans UK summer tour to show her PM credentials
www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/26/jo-swinson-summer-tour-viable-pm-sarah-wollaston

NB That was when Corbyn (progressive-socialist) led LAB so part of: “childish and irresponsible game playing by the Lib Dems who are more interested in attacking Labour than stopping no deal”"

PM in waiting, who went on to lose her own seat in the GE a few months later. Oh, how we laughed at that 

[athena]

Aug 22, 2023 10:30:47 GMT pjw1961 said:

Anecdotal it is true but social studies of that era suggest that working class women of the time were much more likely to vote Conservative than their menfolk and one reason was they were put off by the rather macho culture that prevailed in a lot of industry and washed over into the Labour movement of the day.. 

That's not the half of it. The series of cases of female workers whose pay discrimination claims were dismissed out of hand by unions keen to protect the superior status and wages of their male members is seared on my memory. Low-paid women were belittled, disrespected and subjected to bullying and intimidation tactics by the unions. Eventually a no-win no-fee solicitor won substantial settlements for multiple groups of low-paid women, starting with the Cleveland dinner ladies.

Some of these women eventually sued their union successfully. The Court of Appeal ruled that the GMB had indirectly discriminated against female union members by recommending acceptance of a 'single status' pay deal which grossly underestimated the compensation which should be due to female equal pay Claimants. Although the objective of securing a fair single status pay deal was legitimate, the means used by the union to secure the deal (including grossly misleading the female back-pay claimants) meant that they had not pursued proportionate means of achieving that pay deal.

Cross, the solicitor who brought the claims, became a QC and the MoJ citation included the following: 'Stefan fought for equal pay rights for women who had not been heard by unions, on a no-win no-fee basis. He brought about substantial changes for several hundred thousand women, some of which received tens of thousands of pounds owed to them.'

The Guardian had a story mainly about the court cases and one more about Cross.

And the bad old days may not be over yet. When I was searching for info on the original cases to refresh my memory and provide you lot with links I found a 2020 Herald story about women in Scotland who were lodging claims against Unison, Unite and the GMB.

[Mr Poppy]

Aug 22, 2023 18:56:30 GMT c-a-r-f-r-e-w said:

Aug 22, 2023 18:20:27 GMT pjw1961 said:

Thanks PJ. Be interesting to see how much Green stuff Labour actually deliver and how much this affects Green Party prospects. 

Net Zero (or at least virtually no different to CON) given the 'U-turns' but could be 'O-turns' if LAB ever consider their Left/Green/Woke flank to be under threat - which on CURRENT polling they'd be correct in believing is not under threat. 

[jib]

Aug 22, 2023 18:56:47 GMT Mr Poppy said:

Aug 22, 2023 18:32:56 GMT jib said:

Agree with this. Whilst not "preparing for Government" the Lib Dems thought they were going to hold the balance of power.

Swinson was a bit more ambitious than previous/current LDEM leaders:

Jo Swinson plans UK summer tour to show her PM credentials
www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/26/jo-swinson-summer-tour-viable-pm-sarah-wollaston

NB That was when Corbyn (progressive-socialist) led LAB so part of: “childish and irresponsible game playing by the Lib Dems who are more interested in attacking Labour than stopping no deal”"

PM in waiting, who went on to lose her own seat in the GE a few months later. Oh, how we laughed at that 

Highlight of the night. Priceless. #Bollox

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[steve]

jib
You and your other Tory chum seem a tad obsessed about events before your idiot brexitanians took charge.

I suppose having fucked us all up completely you have to find some outlets for your frustration.

[graham]

Aug 22, 2023 18:49:47 GMT Mr Poppy said:

Aug 22, 2023 18:19:50 GMT graham said:

I am sorry but the 2019 EP election results were hardly worth the paper they were written on at the time they were released.Moreover, they have never have amounted to anything meaningful beyond giving a boost to Farage and UKIP/Bxt Party. The LDs and Greens were naive enough to take them at face value - whilst ignoring what had happened in the past.The huge jump in the Labour vote was significant because it occurred despite a very poor labour result nationally. Had Labour then actually been in the ascendant as is the case today - and was true in 2017 - the pattern revealed would have been even more obvious.

Once again might I suggest you actually read my post. Yes, I remember Swinson (LDEM) getting very excited about the EP'19 results and calling herself 'PM in waiting' - it was quite an amusing time for a Vote.Leave person like me/myself/I. 

Your welcome to check the large move in national VI polls that occurred in the 7mths between EP'19 and GE'19 and (read my posts) to see which party realised which voters (in which seats) they needed to Vote.Leave (for a second time, arguably third but Corbyn did say Brexit was settled into GE'17).

The start of the discussion was about Greens and I'm not 'predicting' how they will do - just that there is some data available at a seat specific level which shows they are quite lumpy (as are all parties to varying extents).

The issue is the 'assumption' that voters will be squeezed into a main party into a GE. I'd quite happily also say that RUK might not 'squeeze' into CON this time but IMO it is quite clear that CCHQ are scared (overly scared?) about that risk and hence RUK are able to exert a lot of influence with zero MPs (now and probably zero after GE'24 as well). 

I am well aware as to how the polls shifted in the second half of 2019  - though that  probably best explains the sharp recovery in Tory - rather than Labour - fortunes as the Brexit party gradually faded away and eventually stood aside in hundreds of seats. It is not quite so obvious why Green and LD support collapsed as much as it did in those seats where they had significantly outpolled Labour in May - but it very clearly did!

I suspect the fact of the matter is that the 2019 EP elections were not taken seriously at all - indeed as always most voters simply ignored them by abstaining. Just a few weeks later in mid-June there was an almost universal expectation amongst commentators - based on the EP results - that the Brexit party was going to defeat Labour at the Peterborough by election - particularly given Labour's added troubles re- Fiona Onasanya. There was general surprise when Labour managed to hold on - though the party went on to lose to the Tories there in December. It was a key moment with hindsight - in that it revealed that even with the very recent apparent momentum of the EP elections behind it, the Brexit Party was already being taken far less seriously at Parliamentary elections.

[Mr Poppy]

The Far-Left are perhaps not the sharpest tools in the shed. You can read the Guardian for free on that modern invention called the internet (which they do seem capable of using). Why would anyone pay for it?

I do find Polly Torybe quite funny though. Bit like Jon Crace but with added bitterness. Fair to say she never liked Corbyn-LAB* very much but Red Tories and she's 🥰 🥰 for Starmer-LAB

* Bit too subtle perhaps?
Devoid of agility, charisma and credibility, Corbyn has led Labour into the abyss
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/jeremy-corbyn-labour-manifesto-antisemitism-brexit

[patrickbrian]

Colin

What's that bird on your new avatar? Is it a booby? (if so, nice bit of subtle self-deprecation)

[athena]

Aug 22, 2023 14:47:29 GMT pjw1961 said:

In contrast the Green vote is quite 'lumpy' with areas of great strength and others where they are largely absent. This actually gives them a better chance of winning Westminster seats than UKIP had, but makes them less of a generic threat outside of their strong areas.

Pedantry alert: a better non-technical term would be clumpy. The statistical term is 'over-dispersion', measured by the dispersion parameter k.

The Green vote skews young and university-educated (even more so than Lab), so the best way to reduce the clumpiness would be to hold the GE during the summer vacation. There's a big student vote in Bristol West, so it's possible that election timing will have non-negligible impact on the Greens' chances of taking that seat.

I reckon the Green vote will be squeezed, despite Starmer's refusal to recognise the urgency and magnitude of climate action required, because most Green-minded voters are strongly anti-Tory and motivated to get rid of this govt. If Starmer were to remove Miliband from the Shadow Climate role a few more voters might remain in the Green column, because he's credible in that role and at this point the main reason to believe that climate policy would be slightly better under a Lab govt. Mind you, Sunak's anti-green posturing is doing Starmer a favour on that score.

My guess is that the RefUK vote will be squeezed much less, provided it still seems highly likely that Con will be defeated. Braverman's efforts don't seem to be convincing even voters on that wing of the right that the govt is doing a good job and the prospect of a certain Con defeat reduces the incentive for tactical Con votes (tactical votes won't stave off a Lab govt).

The interesting issue will be Con abstentions. With my partisan glasses on I'd been assuming that many moderate ROC would find Braverman and her ilk so distasteful that they would sit on their hands, but then I remembered all the LOC people who voted for Corbyn's Lab, despite thinking Corbyn wasn't fit to govern and I don't see why ABL voters should be expected to behave differently. Even if they're not horrified by the prospect of a Starmer-led Lab govt they won't want it to have a large majority.

[Mark]

A couple of observations...

While the Labour lead over the tories varies a bit, between 15 and 25 points, generally averaging just under 20, it seems to me that while the Labour figures are up and down a bit, the tory score remains static, generally at around 27-28% with a much smaller variation.

It also seems to me that where we have had actual results, the Green vote has been just a little stickier than you would expect with a fair amount of tactical ABT voting going on.

The Lab -> LibDem vote has been very fluid (IE a high tactical switch) and vice versa, but, theGreen vote a little less so.

While currently, the Green voter base is a sightly odd coalition, part of that make up, left-Green, is, IMO, more likely to stay Green, with less squeezing, under Starmer than it was under Corbyn, especially true if Labour continue to stall/row back on their green agenda.

[jib]

Aug 22, 2023 19:11:59 GMT steve said:

jib
You and your other Tory chum seem a tad obsessed about events before your idiot brexitanians took charge.

I suppose having fucked us all up completely you have to find some outlets for your frustration.

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[Mr Poppy]

Aug 22, 2023 19:16:50 GMT athena said:

Aug 22, 2023 14:47:29 GMT pjw1961 said:

In contrast the Green vote is quite 'lumpy' with areas of great strength and others where they are largely absent. This actually gives them a better chance of winning Westminster seats than UKIP had, but makes them less of a generic threat outside of their strong areas.

Pedantry alert: a better non-technical term would be clumpy. The statistical term is 'over-dispersion', measured by the dispersion parameter k.

The Green vote skews young and university-educated (even more so than Lab)...

Pedantic alert but you are referring to Green VI (ie those who currently intend to vote Green), where as the issue is 'potential' Green voters in GE'24.

Repost of some polling that has a lot of x-break info:

Public importance of climate change and the environment doubles to become the joint-third biggest issue facing the country

Skip to p28 in the slides to see: "Concern about the environment by subgroup"

www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2023-08/Issues%20Index_Aug23%20CATI_PUBLIC.pdf

Lots of factors will decide how someone votes in GE'24, still 15mths away. In the past (Corbyn-era) then LAB had much more obvious 'green' policies than CON and hence it was not surprising to see people who might have voted Green in a 'free' vote (eg in a PR election) be 'squeezed' into voting for LAB. Next time? I'll leave the crystal ball stuff to others but into a GE campaign then just saying CON are shit but then having pretty much the exact same policies as CON might not see 'potential' Green voters vote LAB

NB I'm not saying Greens will win many, if any, seats. It's not about that. It is about the 'split vote' risk. One CCHQ understood into GE'19 and one it appeared LAB understood into GE'17 (when the marginal voter in the marginal seat was a Leave'16 voter). Next GE?? Since we've thankfully moved on from Brexit then 'Environment' MIGHT become an even more important issue. I hope it is and that is not a partisan comment. I'm disgusted (from Hertfordshire) that both main parties have adopted RUK policies and moved to 'Climate Delay' mode. It's enough to bring back out the gammon in me 

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Regional x-breaks a bit surprising to see North so 'Green'. The 18-24 is slightly distorted by importance of other factors. LAB/'Women'/AB-C1 is perhaps not so surprising (and we see that in current VI, analysis of previous voting, etc - just a 'watered down' version of the 'potential' vote)