General Election 2024

Cav 35 - Tories 0
What a week

Correct. Labour ran an efficient and effective campaign, the allocation of resources to exactly the right places was masterful.

Have you seen any analyses that bear this out? I haven't. A constituency-by-constituency comparison of 2019 and 2025 vote would be useful, but changes in borders could make this tricky.

Would be interesting to see what it would have been had they not changed the boundaries.
The new Eastleigh boundaries (which cut out Hamble, Hedge End etc, but gained Chandler's Ford) went Lib Dem.

Holmes had a majority of 15607 last election, so pretty big change.

Someone on TV last night/this morning was saying that the labour goal was seats, not vote share, and they were set to lose support in safe seats so the campaigning resource could be elsewhere.
I think in that respect, the plan worked really well.

it is a combination. there are a huge amount of chicken farms you're right but the raw sewage being dumped untreated has an effect too. you got to start somewhere. the river is a murky green mess when back in my youth you could watch fish and see the bottom throughout the summer. i canoed regularly as a youth, but now i don't think i'd do any kind of water sports on the wye now due to the high level of pollutants which i'm really sad about.

Someone on TV last night/this morning was saying that the labour goal was seats, not vote share, and they were set to lose support in safe seats so the campaigning resource could be elsewhere.
I think in that respect, the plan worked really well.

Absolutely makes sense and was clearly the tactic not only in safe seats, but seats they deemed unwinnable, or usefully losable (Clacton, the libdem seats they decided to not campaign in).

But I haven't seen anything that shows this is what played out. I'm not saying it didn't, just want to see the analysis.

Edit: to add context why. If there is a remarkable shift in the distribution of votes at the constituency level, the impact of Reform on Labour's win could range from serendipitous to largely inconsequential.

I think this election outcome is a good one in the sense that Labour have a big enough majority to allow them to implement any policies they see fit but have a small enough share of the vote that very few of their MPs will take their seats for granted at the next GE.

Not that anyone cares, but here are my election headlines:

• Voter turnout is at a historic low. There is a collapse in faith in what can be achieved by democratic politics.
• Combined Labour / Conservative vote share is also at a historic low. The big story in this election is the fragmentation of the vote across a wide political spectrum.
• There is no enthusiasm for Labour. They have more or less stayed still, whilst everything else has moved around them.
• There is a total collapse in the Tory vote, following historic highs in total votes for them in 2017 and 2019, when they claimed the mantle of the party of Brexit. Effectively they are being punished for failing to deliver what they promised the benefits of Brexit would be.
• Reform isn’t a breakthrough, per se. Reform vote count and share is similar to what UKIP won in 2015. Those voters have now gone to Reform, after going Tory in 2017 and 2019.

We had an election with no discussion of the macro trends:

• Ageing population driving ever greater share of GDP towards Pensions and NHS.
• Endemic low productivity and low growth.
• A broken economic model with intergenerational inequality entrenched.
• A need for immigration driven by our economic model, lack of needed skills, and need to support an ageing population.
• Climate change and global instability driving further migration.

Or indeed how that then feeds through to specific policy areas of health, education, defence, immigration, housing, climate…

I don't know what Labour's position is on any of these areas. The best I have heard is that changes to planning will enable development of on shore windfarms. Good luck to the incoming government. They will need it.

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. Couldn’t see table before, can see now.

• a lot of horrible bastards won seats but at least horrible bastards thangam debbonaire, johnny mercer, jonathan ashworth and joanna cherry lost theirs

'starmergedden' they said, 'don't surrender' they said 🤣🤣🤣

I have thought for basically my entire adult life that the divisions within left politics have kept a coalition of left leaning parties out of power. I am obviously disgusted with the politics of the Reform party, but they have done a damn good job of splitting the right wing vote in half, ensuring that neither themselves or the tories have had a good night.

I don't know what Labour's position is on any of these areas.

Isn't this mainly due to the media slavishly following the Tory attack lines, rather than asking meaningful questions on serious topics?

The manifesto is there for all to see. In a serious country the party leader would be questioned about it but our political culture is, currently, so infantile that instead large parts of any debate are spent on culture war topics.

Expect a recount

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet, but clearly needs looking at is the polling methodologies, again.

Labour vote share seems to be at the absolute lowest end of what was being predicted, whilst the Tories were at the very upper end of theirs. Reform's vote share prediction was far higher than it actually is.

The manifesto is there for all to see.

and says very little

Poole on a 3rd recount

Both Bournemouth East and West now Labour for the first time 🙌🏻

There has already been at least one, hence it taking so long for the result

Labour aren't going to reveal their inner workings but it's clear they were incredibly organised - I've seen it as a party member - and couldn't have done it much better.

20 months of futility resolved by the 30+ year internal conflict of the Tory party, since John Major failed to withdraw the whip from his b4st4rds.

Starmer to announce National Service for pensioners?

I'm expecting that Russia Report to be made public this afternoon.

Yeah it’s crazy.

Alastair Campbell's getting a lot of Labour airtime on the BBC.
I thought he was expelled from the Labour Party for voting for the LibDems?