Electoral Disaster

torontoboy45

97trophy wrote: »

Sorry, I just don't buy that theory. I know hard-core supporters on both sides and there is nothing that will change these people. Sure, I think that probably 30% of the UK population are swing voters but I think that number has probably been fairly consistent since WW2.

(I don't understand what you mean by a pick and mix approach.)

by pick and mix I mean a move away from tribalism to pragmatism.
e.g. voting tory at a GE, LD (because he/she works hard for the ward) at the locals, UKIP at the euro's (because of the increased curviture of bananas, etc).

true, there will always be a 'hard' vote for all parties but it appears* that the %age is in decline.

* a good article covering this in the sunday times some time ago. sorry - no link.

tomterm8

kennyboy66 wrote: »

Pretty sure they polled around the 25% mark in 1983.
.

That was the SDP-Liberal Party alliance (neither party polled 25% of the vote, they added up both vote shares), so I discounted it. After the union of the two parties, the Libs got around 22%, which give or take a few percent over the last quarter century is pretty much the same as now.

Historically, the Lib Dems have done well when Labour does poorly, and badly when Labour does well.

lemonjelly

I think there has been a reaction by some of the electorate to general dissatisfaction with politicians in general. The expenses story, an increasingly common perception that "they're all as bad as each other/only in it for themselves" etc.

I think the polarisation is interesting.

I also think that none of the 3 main parties have been backed by the nation. In a way, it is almost a vote of no confidence - in any specific party.

The optimist in me is pleased to see voter turn out increasing. This could be a key time for the electorate. With all the scandal over expenses, 149 MP's stepping down to avoid the backlash from their constituents, and a coalition of 2 theoretically & ideologically different parties, I think that there will be more scrutiny of parliament and MP's. I therefore hope that this will encourage more people to take an interest in politics, as politics will certainly be taking an interest in them...;)

If there is a rejuvenation in politics for the electorate, then at least something positive will come out of this mess...

lemonjelly

torontoboy45 wrote: »

by pick and mix I mean a move away from tribalism to pragmatism.
e.g. voting tory at a GE, LD (because he/she works hard for the ward) at the locals, UKIP at the euro's (because of the increased curviture of bananas, etc).

true, there will always be a 'hard' vote for all parties but it appears* that the %age is in decline.

* a good article covering this in the sunday times some time ago. sorry - no link.

I do agree with this view. I voted for different parties at the recent GE/LA elections for exactly this reason - I was happy with the one party's local efforts/successes/activity, even though they weren't the party I voted for nationally.

nickmason

A couple of points:

"Core votes" evolve over time - as the distribution of votes is different. The older generation are much more likely to vote Conservative, the younger generation Liberal Democrat. Labour support is a bit more uniform. So the "core" Conservative vote is literally dying off, which is one of the reasons for the reinvention.

Political parties tend to grab vacuums in the political space. What I mean by that is that they tend not to be as true to their historic label as one might think. The LibDems are an obvious case, but also New Labour, and Thatcherism was a pretty brutal break from previous Conservative positions. So as people realise the parties change, their support does change. For instance, it's not beyond the realm of imagination that we end up with one Old Labour party, one liberal centre right party evolving from the coalition, and a rabid UKIP party. In which case almost all the "Tory core vote" will have moved to UKIP.

carolt

More to the point, in a 3-party system, which we clearly have now, it's not unreasonable for any party to fail to get a clear majority. It doesn't necessarily mean they're useless, it may just mean that the assumption we have of a 2 party system like the US needs revising.

Of course, in a 3-way split, we can expect to see a lot more coalition govts, which is good news for the Lib Dems, as the de facto centrist party - can't quite see a Tory-Lab coalition yet.

Sir_Humphrey

I think the clearest winner is statistics over party-political wishful thinking.

drc

Generali wrote: »

Just a thought. IIRC it is a truism that Labour and Tory will never get less than 30% of the vote as that is the 'core support' for each party.

Mr Brown's Labour Party only managed to score 29% of the vote which is perilously close to Michael 'Donkey' Foot's 27.6% in 1983. In fact, once you take off the advantage an incumbent has in the UK (can time the election, has had 5 years of Government advertising promoting their policies) Mr Brown could be thought to have done even worse than Mr Foot.

Against this and with a background of the worst recession since the 1930s, Mr Cameron's Tories failed to get 40% of the popular vote and failed to get a majority despite a voting system that is justified on the basis that it delivers decisive Government.

Useless, the pair of 'em.

I don't know. The Tories got over 1 million votes more in this election than Labour did when it won in 2005 with a healthy majority. I would say the point about the Tories failing to win an outright majority is true but is because of boundary changes. In terms of the popular vote, the Tories got 2 million votes more than Labour this time around and one million more than Labour when Labour actually won. The system was designed to favour Labour and promote a hung parliament when Labour lost favour with the voting public.

Sir_Humphrey

drc wrote: »

I don't know. The Tories got over 1 million votes more in this election than Labour did when it won in 2005 with a healthy majority. I would say the point about the Tories failing to win an outright majority is true but is because of boundary changes. In terms of the popular vote, the Tories got 2 million votes more than Labour this time around and one million more than Labour when Labour actually won. The system was designed to favour Labour and promote a hung parliament when Labour lost favour with the voting public.

The latest boundary changes favoured the Tories. Sometimes boundary changes favour one party, sometimes the other. AIUI, the political parties make their arguments to the boundary commission between the elections.

Thrugelmir

Generali wrote: »

Just a thought. IIRC it is a truism that Labour and Tory will never get less than 30% of the vote as that is the 'core support' for each party.

Mr Brown's Labour Party only managed to score 29% of the vote which is perilously close to Michael 'Donkey' Foot's 27.6% in 1983. In fact, once you take off the advantage an incumbent has in the UK (can time the election, has had 5 years of Government advertising promoting their policies) Mr Brown could be thought to have done even worse than Mr Foot.

Against this and with a background of the worst recession since the 1930s, Mr Cameron's Tories failed to get 40% of the popular vote and failed to get a majority despite a voting system that is justified on the basis that it delivers decisive Government.

Useless, the pair of 'em.

Looking at the turnout for the election. 2010 was the 3rd worst turnout since 1945 with only 65.1% of the electorate bothering to vote. Previous lows were 59.4% in 2001 and 61.4% in 2005.

So as much as people wish to argue over core vote. 34.9% of the electorate didn't bother. Prior to 2001 the lowest turnout was 71.4% in 1997.

Suggests a huge number of people have become disillusioned or have no interest in tribal poltics, even become complacently comfortable in more recent years.

There may be a recession but few have felt the full blast of reality. To me the striking result was in Redcar where these was a 22% swing to the Libs from Lab. Local issues will increasingly take precedence over National issues.

Maybe peoples perceptions will change as the impact of the current situation hits people in their everyday lives. Where it hurts, in the pocket.
So higher turnout may well on the cards at the next election as people voice their feelings.