Andrew Oakley (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} aoakley) wrote,@ 2009-06-08 16:45:00 |
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Did the LibDems really do WORSE than Labour?
For the past month, the political media have been chanting the same refrain; that Labour would be beaten into fourth place by UKIP in the European elections.
Fourth place.
What actually happened is that Labour were beaten into third place by UKIP. The elephant in the room, which no journalist apparently wants to talk about [1], is that the Liberal Democrats actually fared worse. The LibDems came fourth. The LibDems did worse than Labour.
So what's happened here? Something which even I, as a (literally) card-carrying Conservative party member, can scarcely believe. It would seem that disaffected Labour voters in the North of England and in Wales have switched directly to the Conservatives or UKIP, instead of going to the LibDems. I find this really, really odd. Most pundits would have you believe that the political rainbow of the UK goes, from left to right, Green/PlaidC/ScotN, Labour, LibDem, Conservative, UKIP. To jump straight from Labour to Conservative goes directly against this shared conciousness.
Labour to Green, fine. Labour to LibDem, fine.
Labour to Conservative? Very odd.
Labour to UKIP? Unbelievable.
What can have gone on? I find this result fantastic - as in, it appears to be the work of fantasy. But let's just have a look at the actual numbers, rather than the percentages with which journalists these days seem so preoccupied. Were the raw numbers of voters simply massively down? In 2009, 15.1 million people voted. In 2004, 16.8 million people voted. So that's about one and a half million people who simply didn't turn up to vote.
Can this alone have swung it? Perhaps. Certainly it seems that most ex-Labour voters simply didn't turn up. And they didn't turn up in such large numbers that, those who did, who did switch from Labour to other parties, had a massively magnified effect. As I've noted previously, the BNP managed to get two Euro MPs elected despite getting fewer votes than 2004.
But I still just can't believe that accounts for all of it. Labour, directly to Conservative? Or even less believable, directly to UKIP? Perhaps my perceptions - and those of London-based journalists - are simply wrong. It would still seem that a significant number of ex-Labour voters did exactly that.
My desperate clutching-at-straws, final analysis of this, boils down to two quite startling conclusions.
This switch was all about timing. We now have a full blown recession on, which wasn't even a twinkle in Gordon's loan book in 2004; that's accepted, but doesn't account for a direct switch to opposite ends of the political spectrum.
There is another timing element at play here; the Blair Effect. In 2004, Tony Blair led the Labour Party. He played the persona of charismatic, confident moderate - despite, as it later turned out, being a religious fundamentalist.
In 2009, David Cameron leads the Conservative party. I'm not frightened to admit, even as a Tory member, that Cameron is an identikit Blair replacement, who plays the persona of a charismatic, confident moderate - despite, if you look at his pledge to leave the EPP, being a strident Euroskeptic.
It would seem that the British electorate have found themselves a "type". We like charismatic, confident moderates.
But do we also now like euroskeptics? Cameron certainly is one, but does anyone outside the Conservative party's perpetual internal wranglings actually know this? Well, the evidence from the Euro elections is that, yes they do, and they're quite happy with it.
Which brings me to the second conclusion. UKIP got into second place by the simple, straightforward method of having popular policies. The British public have become massively more euroskeptic in the past five years. How or why, I can't fathom, especially since the IMF has confirmed that all other Western European economies - ie. all the Euro currency economies - were better placed for the recession than us. But that doesn't change the fact that British voters have suddenly become hugely euroskeptic in numbers we previously couldn't predict.
A mass switch to euroskepticism is extremely bad news for the most pro-European mainstream party in the UK. It spells disaster for... the Liberal Democrats.
And suddenly it all adds up.
Meanwhile, in the local elections on the same day, the Conservatives took Devon and Somerset from the LibDem stronghold of the South West. Again, I can't fathom that one. Even in my proudest blue-rosette wearing moments, I can only guess that it must have been local issues. Did the LibDems overspend, perhaps?
[1] Indeed, the BBC seem to have employed Winston Smith to "update" many of their web pages, replacing their inaccurate predictions of Labour's fourth place with the actual results. Try googling for labour fourth place site:news.bbc.co.uk and notice, in a few significant pages, the difference between Google's cached pages and the BBC's replacement pages. Get in quick before the cached copies expire.
For the past month, the political media have been chanting the same refrain; that Labour would be beaten into fourth place by UKIP in the European elections.
Fourth place.
What actually happened is that Labour were beaten into third place by UKIP. The elephant in the room, which no journalist apparently wants to talk about [1], is that the Liberal Democrats actually fared worse. The LibDems came fourth. The LibDems did worse than Labour.
So what's happened here? Something which even I, as a (literally) card-carrying Conservative party member, can scarcely believe. It would seem that disaffected Labour voters in the North of England and in Wales have switched directly to the Conservatives or UKIP, instead of going to the LibDems. I find this really, really odd. Most pundits would have you believe that the political rainbow of the UK goes, from left to right, Green/PlaidC/ScotN, Labour, LibDem, Conservative, UKIP. To jump straight from Labour to Conservative goes directly against this shared conciousness.
Labour to Green, fine. Labour to LibDem, fine.
Labour to Conservative? Very odd.
Labour to UKIP? Unbelievable.
What can have gone on? I find this result fantastic - as in, it appears to be the work of fantasy. But let's just have a look at the actual numbers, rather than the percentages with which journalists these days seem so preoccupied. Were the raw numbers of voters simply massively down? In 2009, 15.1 million people voted. In 2004, 16.8 million people voted. So that's about one and a half million people who simply didn't turn up to vote.
Can this alone have swung it? Perhaps. Certainly it seems that most ex-Labour voters simply didn't turn up. And they didn't turn up in such large numbers that, those who did, who did switch from Labour to other parties, had a massively magnified effect. As I've noted previously, the BNP managed to get two Euro MPs elected despite getting fewer votes than 2004.
But I still just can't believe that accounts for all of it. Labour, directly to Conservative? Or even less believable, directly to UKIP? Perhaps my perceptions - and those of London-based journalists - are simply wrong. It would still seem that a significant number of ex-Labour voters did exactly that.
My desperate clutching-at-straws, final analysis of this, boils down to two quite startling conclusions.
This switch was all about timing. We now have a full blown recession on, which wasn't even a twinkle in Gordon's loan book in 2004; that's accepted, but doesn't account for a direct switch to opposite ends of the political spectrum.
There is another timing element at play here; the Blair Effect. In 2004, Tony Blair led the Labour Party. He played the persona of charismatic, confident moderate - despite, as it later turned out, being a religious fundamentalist.
In 2009, David Cameron leads the Conservative party. I'm not frightened to admit, even as a Tory member, that Cameron is an identikit Blair replacement, who plays the persona of a charismatic, confident moderate - despite, if you look at his pledge to leave the EPP, being a strident Euroskeptic.
It would seem that the British electorate have found themselves a "type". We like charismatic, confident moderates.
But do we also now like euroskeptics? Cameron certainly is one, but does anyone outside the Conservative party's perpetual internal wranglings actually know this? Well, the evidence from the Euro elections is that, yes they do, and they're quite happy with it.
Which brings me to the second conclusion. UKIP got into second place by the simple, straightforward method of having popular policies. The British public have become massively more euroskeptic in the past five years. How or why, I can't fathom, especially since the IMF has confirmed that all other Western European economies - ie. all the Euro currency economies - were better placed for the recession than us. But that doesn't change the fact that British voters have suddenly become hugely euroskeptic in numbers we previously couldn't predict.
A mass switch to euroskepticism is extremely bad news for the most pro-European mainstream party in the UK. It spells disaster for... the Liberal Democrats.
And suddenly it all adds up.
Meanwhile, in the local elections on the same day, the Conservatives took Devon and Somerset from the LibDem stronghold of the South West. Again, I can't fathom that one. Even in my proudest blue-rosette wearing moments, I can only guess that it must have been local issues. Did the LibDems overspend, perhaps?
[1] Indeed, the BBC seem to have employed Winston Smith to "update" many of their web pages, replacing their inaccurate predictions of Labour's fourth place with the actual results. Try googling for labour fourth place site:news.bbc.co.uk and notice, in a few significant pages, the difference between Google's cached pages and the BBC's replacement pages. Get in quick before the cached copies expire.
