"We were up against gerrymandered constituency boundaries, Union involvement in Labour's campaign (see their "axe" poster in Strood, for example), possible widespread postal vote fraud, lots of personal voters being unable to vote late yesterday evening, the Armed Forces and ex-pats' votes being kept out of the equation, and a whole range of dirty campaigning tricks as well as widespread (though not universal) media bias and selective/mis-reporting.Despite all of that, the Conservatives have gained 94 seats nationwide, which is their largest nett seat gain since 1931. That is quite an achievement!
All in all it was a remarkable achievement [for the Conservatives], especially post-Cleggmania; and the trend in the polls strongly indicates that if the election had been one week later the story would have been different."
The overall seats result (with one seat, Thirsk and Malton, delayed owing to a candidate's death) is as follows:
- Conservative – 306 seats (10,706,647 votes = 36·95% of the vote)
- Labour – 258 seats (8,604,358 votes = 29·69% of the vote)
- Lib Dem – 57 seats ( 6,827,938 votes = 23·56% of the vote)
- SNP – 6 seats
- Plaid Cymru – 3 seats
- Others – 19 seats
Another huge problem was this, JW.
ReplyDeleteThe evaporation of Cleggmania when it came to actual votes was the only accurate prediction I made. I suppose the media had to get behind the idea, as let's face it, it would have been an exciting change in British politics had it really happened.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments, guys.
ReplyDeleteYes, the "UKIP factor" was again present, and I for one had allowed for several seats being scuppered by their presence, as happened in 2005. That was always going to happen, though at least their candidate for Rochester and Strood withdrew.
Re Cleggmania: whether this would have been a good time for a third party to come to real prominence at a time such as this is something that we and the pundits could debate for a long time.
I for one am pleased that it wasn't too great, as on this occasion we really need a firm and non wishy-washy government able to get our nation out of this terrible mess. On another occasion it would be interesting to have a coalition, but it's a poor second-best for today.
This is a terrible result for the UK. I voted and now wish i had not, it is a scam and a dangerous place to be with cameron in Goverment. My first time voting im not sure i want to ever do it again. I hope clegg screws the lot of you.
ReplyDeleteYuan
Well, Anon, it has been a dangerous place to be ever since Labour started expanding the "surveillance State" hugely.
ReplyDeleteNow we have the chance to reverse the worst of that harm, and prevent any more coming into being.
If that suggests to anyone that it is now becoming "dangerous", I can only conclude that such individuals must be in favour of the Surveillance State and loss of civil liberties...