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Category: General Election

What sort of fool would have predicted the politics of 2020 in 2010? Me.

What sort of fool would have predicted the politics of 2020 in 2010? Me.

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Andy Welsh Flickr Time for the reckoning on my long-term calls At the start of the decade, I asked what politics in the UK would look like ten years hence. That time has now arrived, so let’s look at how I did and, beyond that, how anyone could have done. Predicting a few weeks ahead can be a hazardous business; predicting a decade into the future would be foolhardy in the extreme which is probably why observant readers will notice…

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The Leave seat with a miniscule LAB majority that didn’t fall

The Leave seat with a miniscule LAB majority that didn’t fall

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Why didn’t bellwether Bedford swing? Even though it was a fortnight ago I’ve still not found an answer to what appeared to be an inexplicable outcome in my seat of Bedford. This is a constituency that at GE2010, GE2015, GE2017 and the referendum voted most of all 650 seats in line with the country as a whole. Longstanding PB regular, Andy JS, highlighted the seat’s status before GE2019 and certainly on hearing the exit poll many, including me, assumed that…

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GE2019 – the general election that the pollsters mostly got right

GE2019 – the general election that the pollsters mostly got right

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Wikipedia I don’t want to move on from the general election before just looking back at the performance of the pollsters. This election was important to them following  the disappointing final surveys that we saw in 2015 and 2017 when with one or two notable exceptions the polls were some way off. Note  that national polling for Westminster elections generally takes place on a GB basis with Northern Ireland being excluded. So the comparisons should be made with what happened…

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Labour’s uncivil (Brexit) war     

Labour’s uncivil (Brexit) war     

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 A guest slot from Egg The fuel to ignite the bitterness of the imminent Labour war is fact you cannot have remainers in the Labour Party now.   How can you if the word has no meaning anymore, remainery has ceased to be, if the party ever wins again they will inherit a nation (or whats left of it) outside the EU. So it needs a compromise, does it not?             Whether voting for one or betting on the outcome,…

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On a holiday note linking the location of football clubs to what happened at GE2019 & the referendum

On a holiday note linking the location of football clubs to what happened at GE2019 & the referendum

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Prospect CON & Leave areas more likely to be lower down The above table has been prepared by academics Phil Cowley and Matthew Bailey and appears under the grand title “How football grounds explain the election result” in Prospect Magazine. As they observe: “ Premier League clubs are mostly in big cities, and big cities largely return Labour MPs and voted Remain. As you move down the leagues, you get smaller cities and towns, which are more likely to be…

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How a CON majority moved from a 31% chance to victory – the GE2019 betting timeline

How a CON majority moved from a 31% chance to victory – the GE2019 betting timeline

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Before we move on from looking at GE19 I thought it might be useful, as with previous big political events like the referendum, to put up the betting chart. As can be seen shortly after Johnson became CON leader and PM Betfair punters rated the chances of the Tories securing an overall majority at just a 31% chance. As the betdata.io chart of the biggest Betfair GE2019 market shows that rose rose rose till 10pm on December 12th when the…

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The Mandate

The Mandate

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The Conservatives are triumphant. Labour have been smashed, the Lib Dems have actually regressed. The Tories may not have managed a landslide in the technical sense of getting a majority of 100, but they weren’t far away and their lead of 160 over the second-placed party is very handy indeed. They will be as dominant in Parliament as the Conservatives were in the 1987 Parliament or the Labour party was after the 2005 election. The Conservatives will take this as…

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Labour’s GE2019 post mortem

Labour’s GE2019 post mortem

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Proverbial wisdom tells us that success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan. It’s a saying that appears to have by-passed the Labour party at least, since their general response to the election has been to hurl fistfuls of paternity tests at each other in a way that would send Jeremy Kyle off for a cold shower and a lie down. It’s been an analytically productive grand bun fight at least. While the pollsters are still nursing their hangovers,…

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