Venusian was right earlier when he said to see what happens. A rather suprising and disappointing result.
Still, some petty solace can be found for me at least seeing Ed Balls removed from his seat, and more generally in a reminder sent to the lib dems of the dangers of betraying the electorate's expectations.
pogo wrote:Every English contest I’ve looked at (only a fraction of them) the Tories have increased their share of the vote. Even in the one seat Labour have won off the Tories, they won it off a collapse in the Lib Dem vote, while the Tories also increased their share:
In my constituency, which has switched from LD to Tory now, the Tory bloke got more votes than in 2010, but his overall share went down by a couple of percent. Because more people came out to vote this time than in 2010.
Polling expert John Curtice says: "With 618 of the 632 seats in Great Britain declared so far, the Lib Dems have lost as many as 338 deposits."
He says the party has already lost more deposits than at any previous election. The closest was 319 in 1950 - on that occasion, the deposit was lost when a candidate polled less than 12.5% of the vote rather than 5%.
In some ways the seats they won are a misleading, makes it look like they have more support than e.g. UKIP. But they have been largely eliminated as a factor in most seats; UKIP have done much better. The few seats they have may be vulnerable once the sitting MP retires, especially if Labour moves back to the centre.
And there‘s less comfort for Labour in how the other parties have done. Apart from having their Scottish seats and advantage wiped out having UKIP as the third largest party in England is much more of a help for the Tories, as it will be much easier for them to attract UKIP supporters than Labour.
Those with long memories may remember Thatcher did something similar. With the British Nationality Act in 1981 she removed the right of all British Commonwealth citizens to come here and settle (hard to believe they could ever do that, but it accounts for much of the immigration from e.g. South Asia, the Caribbean up to that point). In so doing, and moving to the right on areas that mattered to their supporters, the Tories made the NF much less relevant and probably contributed to their decline.
Lord Ashdown on why (in retrospect) it’s a really bad idea for a politician to become a pollster. The 'shy Tory' factor all over again? Except after 1992 that was supposed to be built into their models.
Waking up to five more years of Cameron is a nightmare.
Galloway ousted, Farage and UKIP are utter failures and the SNP get to twiddle their thumbs.
Unless...
How solid is Cameron's grip? Will the right of the party hold him to ransom? Will the Euro rebels press harder? Can he actually pass legislation with a wafer-thin majority?
Its a great result. Absolute majority obtained, although the Tory Whips will have to keep an Iron grip on the Mps to stop any revolts. Only downside is Labour will be ditching Milliband and so may actually stand a chance next time around.
