General Election 2024

Cheers. That's interesting.

Dowden is my MP, and while I don't like him imo he is a fickle fuck rather than a headbander.

Cameron put him in and if there is a strong One Nation contingent that he believes will allow him to progress I think he'll drop the culture war shit in a second. Obvs the reverse applies.

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This is really interesting, I'm just outside the Fareham constituency after the boundary changes. Labour have been well ahead of the Lib Dems since 2010, but at a local council level the lib dems have been taking lots of seats off the Torys.

I was in Fareham town centre on Saturday morning, there was a large community fair going so I got off my bike and walked through in the hope of seeing Braverman so I could call her antisemite again. There was no Tory representation. The Lib dems where out in force and I got to meet the Bella Hewitt there candidate, got strong MP vibes from her.

Just seen my first reform poster 🤢

I saw this earlier, these cunts had an even bigger vote leave banner back in 2016.

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hilarious that those banners barely have the party name at all. all these minor Tories betting that their own personal brand is worth more votes than their party's

Get the spraypaint out

I read that as GCHQ every single time. So confusing

The MRPs that presumably they are basing their predictions on are broadly in agreement, with about 400 seats that they all have going the same way.

The area where these predictions fall down is when there are multiple candidates who are likely to get a decent share of the vote, i.e. three way marginals. I don't know if Bristol Central is one of those, but there are about 200 seats where no-one really has a clue who's going to win due to a mix of boundary changes, and volatile electorates who have a choice of three or four candidates who could win.

Reading the Comment is Freed Election Briefing this morning, which covers Suffolk, Norfolk and Northamptonshire and there are lots of seats there which could go Labour, Reform, Tory and even Green. It's going to be fascinating to see how this all plays out.

Good article on FPTP/PR, stability, and levels of satisfaction:

There is a distinct possibility that the UK general election on July 4 produces the following outcome. Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party wins a record 450 seats and a huge majority on a lower share of the vote than Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour achieved in 2017. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats win the second-largest number of seats, becoming the official opposition, despite finishing fourth on vote share behind both the Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

If that sounds far-fetched, it is well within the range of current polling. Even with a less extreme result, it is likely that the Lib Dems could win around 50 seats on a lower share of the vote than Reform, which ends up with a few seats at best.

https://www.ft.com/content/0afa2c8f-3e4f-4b2c-83be-cda81250dfc6

Edit: Link to get around the paywall

I like it when people make predictions, especially when they do so to hold themselves to account:

https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/not-a-prediction-bea8d1b7ae11

I think some are also based on other data as well as polls such as local elections, demographics, historic results, etc and I guess they weight those things differently.

Full disclosure on this, Dinenage is vaguely in our circle of friends, thanks to the wife >>>> golf club thread..

Apparently she's really pissed off that she having to go out and talk to her constituents. There is more than half an chance she could loss to Labour, despite them doing zero canvassing.

Interesting views from foreign journo's covering the election

On Brexit:

This leaves the country with a big, problem that can’t be named, which increases the risk that past mistakes will be repeated. Seeing Nigel Farage re-emerge as the anti-establishment figure is surreal, to say the least. With some honourable exceptions, most interviewers are not willing to challenge Farage or break the Brexit taboo. Instead, they accept his deceitful narrative that he is (still) an outsider. They do not hold him to account for having used false claims and promises to lead Britain out of the EU. Instead they give him space to rant, again. It feels like a very British Groundhog Day.

And from the Polish journo:

Britain is no longer considered a tempting place to live. In fact, Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, recently even made a specific political point at Britain’s expense. On the 20th anniversary of Poland’s accession to the EU, he promised Polish GDP per capita would surpass Britain’s by 2029.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/24/mood-among-british-voters-election-europe

Good idea:

1. Low turnout
   
2. Labour do less well than expected
   
3. Reform do less well than expected
   
   

I was phenomenally wrong about how Brexit would play out. I never expected us to immediately trigger the leaving process and never thought we'd end up with the hard Brexit we had. I assumed it would be BAU and take 5yrs to even work out what Brexit looked like.

Losing to a party making no effort is one thing.

Labour winning over another progressive party who are active in the community whilst not campaigning pisses me off.

I have a section of garden fronting an important through road. Very tempted to put up a fuck the Tories banner.

Bristol central is a new (or returning) consitutency, but a two horse race between Carla Denyer and incumbent Thangam Debbonaire - shadow sec for culture, media and sport. Seems it's the survation poll which is predicting labour, yougov and ipsos mori for green

Poll predictions here:
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49809-second-yougov-2024-election-mrp-shows-conservatives-on-lowest-seat-total-in-history
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/uk-opinion-polls/ipsos-election-mrp
https://www.survation.com/mrp-update-first-mrp-since-farages-return/

MissNumbers was in the front garden on Saturday morning, and there are three people loitering / looking a bit lost just the other side of the fence/gate.

They notice MissNumbers: "Oh hi, we're from Jeremy Corbyn's election campaign. Can we ask who you'll be voting for?"

"Labour. If I didn't vote for Labour, this time, and they didn't get in, I'd never forgive myself."

So they lose interest (obvious lost cause), but one of them mutters: "Loser" and the other two are massively embarrassed as MissNumbers asks "sorry, what was that?"

Then they went next door and could be heard to be looking for 'Flat 3', at a house with two flats clearly labelled A and B.

They've knocked at our place twice now and I hate that I haven't been there on either occasion. Because he and they can Fuck Right Off.

i thought that was Go Sport - a new party I had not heard of

Got my poster and it’s up in the window

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Labour winning over another progressive party who are active in the community whilst not campaigning pisses me off.

To be fair Gosport wouldn't be in the top 150 target seats for Labour in normal circumstances and the Lib dems have never been anywhere near.

In other local seats, there is definitely a pact between Labour and Lib Dems. So much so that in my seat Hamble we haven't even had a mail shot through the door from Labour and it's the same for people in Fareham & waterlooville, the Lib dems are being given a clear run at them both. As I understand it the Lib dems are doing almost nothing in North Portsmouth so Labour get a clear run at penny mordaunt

Lord Fawfaw bleating over being called out for being a Putin quisling:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/24/nigel-farage-attacks-mail-newspapers-over-putin-ally-reports

the power dynamic is interesting because no tories would dream of attacking any of the mainstream newspapers.
also interesting that tories have been haemorrhaging votes to reform but they seemed to be scared to attack them. the putin comments are the first time they have had a go. it's hard to see how the tories can attack reform's general stance since they want to appear as tough as possible on immigration and they both have unfunded manifestos

I'd love to know what you think he'l achieve for the area as an independent considering how little he achieved as an MP of a major party across his career.

I think the use of the word 'voice' is very telling for Corbyn as he seems to be great at speaking up but terrible at making any of that rhetoric happen.

Labour were ready and waiting to go a couple of days before the date announcement by R.S. It seems they had been monitoring the odds on the date of the election and when the odds shortened they knew they had the date.
Source -BBC