Why the Tories Won

gadgetmind

F me, you're still going to be arguing when it's time for another sodding election!

ruggedtoast

I thought Brian May made some good points on Question Time last night. Of course it was pretty lost on the Uxbridge audience. I think they probably had all the non conservative voters in the town in the audience and there were still less than ten of them.

He said it was a shame that Cameron had hijacked the use of the term 'aspiration' which used to mean the desire to achieve something intrinsically worthwhile, rather than just accumulating money and a mortgage. Blank looks all around there, followed by the Tory MP grumpily complain that accumulating money is an aspiration. Yes, well I suppose if you think that is what life is about then there is no reaching you anyway.

I don't think there will ever be a reconciliation in this country. Sometimes it seems to me that half the country are selfish g1ts who don't want to pay any taxes and the other half are idle scroungers who don't want to do any work.

Maybe they deserve eachother.

Thrugelmir

ruggedtoast wrote: »

I thought Brian May made some good points on Question Time last night. Of course it was pretty lost on the Uxbridge audience.

Best to stick at what you are good at, i.e. music in May's case. As was a wasted seat last night.

CLAPTON

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Best to stick at what you are good at, i.e. music in May's case. As was a wasted seat last night.

May has a Ph.d in astrophysics but yes he was a waste of space last night.

Sapphire

CLAPTON wrote: »

May has a Ph.d in astrophysics but yes he was a waste of space last night.

The only thing I agreed on with him was his statement about fox hunting. If the Tory hard-liners succeed in reintroducing this, it will lose their party a lot of supporters. There's no place for such barbaric 'sports' in a civilised society.

gadgetmind

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Sometimes it seems to me that half the country are selfish g1ts who don't want to pay any taxes and the other half are idle scroungers who don't want to do any work.

What would happen if the latter half had a change of mind and started working harder/smarter (or at all in some cases)? And then muse on what would happen if the former half had an attack of indolence?

Generali

No sign of buyer's remorse so far:

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9435

ComRes have released their first voting intention poll since the election, and have topline figures of CON 41%, LAB 29%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 10%, GRN 5%. Full details are here.

I believe this is the first poll using updated polling methodologies using lessons learned from the last General Election.

The result at the General Election was:

Tory 37% (now up 4% from there)
Lab 30% (-1%)
Lib Dem 8% (no change)
UKIP 8% (-5%)
SNP 5% (nc)
Green 4% (+1%)

So the parties have moved within their margin of error except UKIP who appear to be jumping ship to the Tories: I expect a lot will go back to UKIP for the Euros where your share of the vote is reflected in your representatives rather than representative.

Better to vote for a mildly Euroskeptic party than vote to quit the EU and get a Europhile one instead...? TBH I expected that to happen before the GE and whilst I wasn't surprised that the Tories did better than the polls predicted I was surprised at how many votes UKIP got.

michaels

Would be really interesting to have the poll using the old methodology to compare against. It tends to support my theory that tories voted (possibly out of fear of the alternative rather than for positive reasons) whereas labour leaning voters were less bothered. Note that turnout was actually 3% lower than the pollsters were predicting.

Generali

michaels wrote: »

Would be really interesting to have the poll using the old methodology to compare against. It tends to support my theory that tories voted (possibly out of fear of the alternative rather than for positive reasons) whereas labour leaning voters were less bothered. Note that turnout was actually 3% lower than the pollsters were predicting.

Yer man that runs the Uk polling site reckons that 3% made the difference: they were basically Labour supporters that didn't come to the polls that said they would.

I suspect we're back to the 80s/90s: the Tories are the "natural party of Government". What will Labour do to interrupt that?

Blair was a Great PM insofar as his party kept getting voted in. Apart from that the post WW1 history really is one of Labour occasionally interrupting Tory Governments.

Who votes Labour these days? Socialists might hold their nose and do so and I guess there's the state employees who tend to do better under a Labour Government. The tradesman who is employing a couple of people and just wants to get on in life is probably the swing voter these days and (s)he's Tory or perhaps UKIP if she doesn't trade internationally.

Generali

michaels wrote: »

Would be really interesting to have the poll using the old methodology to compare against. It tends to support my theory that tories voted (possibly out of fear of the alternative rather than for positive reasons) whereas labour leaning voters were less bothered. Note that turnout was actually 3% lower than the pollsters were predicting.

They don't do that unfortunately.

Interestingly (to me) only 32% of respondents that voted were prepared to say that they voted Tory vs an actual vote of 37%. That 5% is well outside the normally expected margin of error.