Can Blue Labour beat Back the purple onslaught? Two and a half of years ago when the ‘Blue Labour’ group of thinkers in the party first made their mark there was quite a bit of a stir. The ‘blue’ in Blue Labour was ‘small c’ conservativism among working class voters – it was blue collar. But in a party that wraps itself in all things red, even the name raised eyebrows. At its heart, leading proponents Jon Cruddas took to…
The chart is based on Rallings & Thrasher data for today’s Sunday Times which has the pair’s own national equivalent vote share projections based on their detailed analysis of the outcome on Thursday. This has CON 26%, LAB 29%, LD 13%, Ukip 22% The numbers are different from the one’s published on Friday by the BBC and SkyNews because they are based on a different calculation. Two things stand out: the harsh fact for Ukip that by having a vote…
Dramatic story breaking on Sky about the deputy Speaker, Nigel Evans. goo.gl/gxmBS twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st… — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) May 4, 2013
But should UKIP have done even better? Thursday’s elections represented a resounding raspberry to all three main parties. Indeed, they reinforced that even talking of three main parties is an anachronism.  The Lib Dems did win more than twice as many councillors as UKIP but in all other respects they finished well behind. In the South Shields by-election, UKIP scored another second place (their fourth in the last five mainland contests) and in the local elections, Nigel Farage’s party came…
The existing electoral advantages that LAB has are magnified in a 4 party system. Ukip’s rise lowers the bar for EdM twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st… — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) May 3, 2013 The benefits of not having your support evenly spread Just for fun I keyed in the BBC’s projected national vote shares of CON 24, LAB 29, LD 14, Ukip 23 into Martin Baxter seat calculator at ElectoralCalculus. The result was remarkable.LAB was on 324 seats – just two short of an…
Latest BBC vote share changes twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st… — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) May 3, 2013 @goodwinmj In divisions where they stood in 2009: UKIP up 14 points to 26%; Greens down 3 points at 7%; and BNP down 11 points to 4% — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) May 3, 2013 @kevint1972 My £100 8/1 bet that Ukip will win 2+ seats at GE2015 looks good. — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) May 3, 2013 These are the first County Council elections since 1993 being held…
Prof John Curtice: UKIP “greatest threat to established party system since WWW2” twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st… — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) May 3, 2013 Curtice on Ukip UKIP results looking “quite remarkable”, averaging 26% in council wards contested – #vote2013 analyst Prof Curtice bbc.in/16vV1M9 — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) May 3, 2013 The story so far #vote2013 so far: Labour win South Shields by-election; Tories retain 5 councils, lose 2; UKIP make gains. Go to bbc.co.uk/vote2013 — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) May 3, 2013 The LD…
Today sees the sternest test for David Cameron out of any local election he has so far had to face. The 2009 local elections were a complete Conservative triumph. Of the 2,492 councillors elected at those elections, 1,494 (or nearly 60%) were Conservative and apart from Bristol, Cornwall, Cumbria, Northumberland and Anglesey, the Conservatives are defending majority control in every single council up for election (which make the pitfalls even more dangerous). At the time of those local elections, the…