Why the Tories Won

james_mason

Tories won because they took seats of Labour and Lib Dem and Labour were decimated in Scotland. Ukip had more votes than SNP and Libs together and end up losing one of their seats.

warehouse

The Tory's won because of Ed Milliband.

Thread closed.

antrobus

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Ah, must admit I didn't.

Why go back to 2005?
Surely the comparison is from the last election

his figures for Labour votes in 2005 is still wrong they got 9,552,436 in 2005, hence their vote is still down since then, but up since 2010

Oh good grief! First of all you don't spot that that I'm talking about 2005, then you don't spot that I'm talking about England and Wales!

Wikipedia does indeed say that Labour got 9,552,436 votes in 2005, but the BBC says 9,562,581, and if you subtract the 922,402 votes they got in Scotland you get 8,640,179.

The reason to go back to 2005 is this - don't you think that it as at the very least quite interesting that Labour got the exact same 8.64 million votes in England and Wales in 2005 (when they won) as they did in 2015 (when they lost).

bigheadxx

antrobus wrote: »

Oh good grief! First of all you don't spot that that I'm talking about 2005, then you don't spot that I'm talking about England and Wales!

Wikipedia does indeed say that Labour got 9,552,436 votes in 2005, but the BBC says 9,562,581, and if you subtract the 922,402 votes they got in Scotland you get 8,640,179.

The reason to go back to 2005 is this - don't you think that it as at the very least quite interesting that Labour got the exact same 8.64 million ū in England and Wales in 2005 (when they won) as they did in 2015 (when they lost).

Not as interesting as the fact that they got less votes in England that the Tories but still "won" the election in 2005. The so called 35% strategy in 2015 was based on the fact that it was possible for them to form a government with a low share of the vote.

Its also worth considering who may decide not to vote, its not the same people at each election. In 1997, many Tory voters could just about stomach a Blair government but were not prepared to vote for him. In 2015 the opposite was true. English Labour non-voters were OK with Cameron winning but necessarily prepared to back him.

thor

Sapphire wrote: »

Nonsense. If anything it was sturgeon and her appalling hostile anti-English rhetoric, and the thought that the SNP would unite with labour, with awful consequences for the United Kingdom, that put voters off both labour and the SNP.

Yes and down here in England it appeared every tory politician was legally obligated to state that Labour would join forces with the SNP if there was a hung Parliament and that ED Milliband was lying.

CLAPTON

thor wrote: »

Yes and down here in England it appeared every tory politician was legally obligated to state that Labour would join forces with the SNP if there was a hung Parliament and that ED Milliband was lying.

No down here in England many people thought that there would be a de facto working agreement whereby SNP would keep labour in power, as long as he supported yet more borrowing with a rake off for Scotland.
No-one assumed Ed would lie, after all, his principles were set in stone.

chewmylegoff

thor wrote: »

Yes and down here in England it appeared every tory politician was legally obligated to state that Labour would join forces with the SNP if there was a hung Parliament and that ED Milliband was lying.

There is a lot of fuss about how the Tories scared people into voting for them by talking about the likelihood of a large SNP contingent supporting a minority labour govt - I am not sure why given that the SNP got 56 seats and clearly would have done exactly what the Tories were warning everyone about if they had had the opportunity to do so.

Meanwhile everyone has conveniently forgotten that labour ran a wholly negative campaign as well. Every labour politician appeared obligated to say that the Tories would cut NHS spending and privatise it and then increase VAT and that David Cameron was lying.

Plus Ed Milliband even repeated the "£40,000 tax cut for every millionaire" lie on every occasion he could even though, as a millionaire himself, he was well aware that he hadn't received anything of the sort because a millionaire is someone who has 1,000,000 of assets not someone who earns £1m a year. He was deliberately and brazenly trying to mislead the electorate - yet everyone is crying about the Tories supposedly "scaremongering" about something that actually then happened.

Dansmam

Might it not be that one of the reasons the Tories got the seats they did (aside from lib dem betrayal of their supporters core values, and lib dem supporters voting on values not tactically, hence the SW turning blue) is that people on in-work benefits don't like to think they're `on benefits` and employers have no problem with a benefits system that saves them money? Haven't seen much reference recently to how under- employment is being masked. It's more complex than just zero hours contracts.

antrobus

bigheadxx wrote: »

Not as interesting as the fact that they got less votes in England that the Tories but still "won" the election in 2005.....

Yes, but I thought everybody already knew that. At least, I already knew that.

I was just struck by the co-incidence of the same 8.6m number which I didn't expect.

bigheadxx wrote: »

... The so called 35% strategy in 2015 was based on the fact that it was possible for them to form a government with a low share of the vote.....

A strategy that was never going to work, since the combination of the SNP surge and Lib Dem collapse had stripped away the electoral advantage they once enjoyed.

bigheadxx wrote: »

...Its also worth considering who may decide not to vote, its not the same people at each election. In 1997, many Tory voters could just about stomach a Blair government but were not prepared to vote for him. In 2015 the opposite was true. English Labour non-voters were OK with Cameron winning but necessarily prepared to back him.

Well, yes of course. Voting movements are always net. For one thing, about half a million people die every year. If you think about it, over the course of a decade, something like 15% of the electorate will be composed of entirely different people.

antrobus

chewmylegoff wrote: »

There is a lot of fuss about how the Tories scared people into voting for them by talking about the likelihood of a large SNP contingent supporting a minority labour govt -.....

What would it be about the following statement that people woule find difficult to understand?

"If you want a Labour government that won’t just be a carbon copy of the Tories but will instead deliver the real change Scotland needs, then you must elect SNP MPs to force Labour’s hand and keep them honest."

chewmylegoff wrote: »

... I am not sure why given that the SNP got 56 seats and clearly would have done exactly what the Tories were warning everyone about if they had had the opportunity to do so.....

See above. The SNP persuaded Labour voters that they could vote SNP and still get a Labour government.

chewmylegoff wrote: »

..Meanwhile everyone has conveniently forgotten that labour ran a wholly negative campaign as well. ....

What I find quite funny, is to find certain Labour supporters complaining about the 'vilification' of Ed Miliband; often the very same people who lose no opportunity to vilify Conservative politicians. Making fun of Two Kitchens for his difficulties in eating a bacon sandwich is apparently not on; but it's perfectly OK to refer to Ian Duncan Smith as a 'vile odious creep', for example.:)