UK: Tory lead over Labour plummets to FIVE POINTS in new Europe Elects poll

[Ken Burch]

https://mobile.twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/867852235149127681

Conservatives 43%
Labour 38%
Liberal Democrats 10%
SNP(Scottish National Party)and Plaid Cymru(Welsh Nationalist party)5% combined
UKIP 4%
Greens 1%

[hrmjustin]

1. A bit of good news from across the pond.

[roamer65]

2. Sadly, 43 percent will still give them a majority government.

If they go below 40, then they are nearer to a hung parliament scenario.

[Ken Burch]

3. There's still two weeks 'til polling day

As Harold Wilson, a former Labour prime minister, once said "A week is a long time in politics".

[Denzil_DC]

5. It's very hard to predict.

Nate Silver discovered this to his cost during the last UK general election, as he acknowledges. National polls can only give a broad indication (with quite a large margin of error), it's the geographic distribution of the votes that matters, and we don't have sufficiently detailed regular polling in this country, certainly not compared to the US.

The conventional wisdom is that, for a variety of reasons, Labour needs to be substantially ahead in the polls to draw even with the Tories in terms of seats. But this has been a very strange election, and that doesn't seem set to change.

[Ken Burch]

7. Glad you've shown up in this discussion, Denzil. Had a question for you about this poll.

As an SNP voter, doesn't it strike you as kind of weird that they lumped the SNP and Plaid vote together?

I know those parties are kind of informally allied, but they're not only not standing in the same constituencies, they're not standing in the same COUNTRIES(if we define the UK as England plus two conquered Celtic nations and a chunk of a third).

Is that a common thing in UK opinion polling?

[Denzil_DC]

17. A lot of the time, if you see polling about Scotland

(the same will apply to Wales), the headlines will be based on a subsample of a UK-wide poll.

This is problematic in a number of ways - e.g., the sample will usually be smaller than is the norm (~ 1,000 respondees usually gives a +/-3% margin of error), and it won't be properly weighted demographically, so it's even more unreliable.

I'm just pleased they didn't lump the SNP, Plaid and the Greens in with UKIP, as "other".

[Ken Burch]

19. That would REALLY put the "other" in other.

[Denzil_DC]

22. Here's Nate Silver on the historical flaws of UK polling:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-u-k-snap-election-is-riskier-than-it-seems/

[Tiggeroshii]

9. Actually libdems and Labour are at 48% with greens 1%

Liberals together are polling at 49%. They could actually pull this this out if they keep going in this direction.

On edit: was informed that labour's coalition is polling at 53% including the Welsh party that would join labour.

[Ken Burch]

20. Well, it may not be a coalition YET.

Earlier in the campaign, the LibDem leader, Tim Farron, explicitly ruled out a coalition with Labour. There is real feat that he might do another coalition with the Tories...apparently having forgotten that the LAST coalition nearly destroyed the LibDems.

[Denzil_DC]

23. I think a formal coalition between any of the parties is very unlikely,

whatever the result, not least because of how badly the Tory/Lib Dem coalition worked out for the smaller party.

If the SNP repeat anything like their showing in the last election (a tall order - 56 out of 59 seats may not be repeatable - but I wouldn't rule it out), they'll be the largest third party again. They wouldn't want to be saddled with the associations a formal coalition would entail, Labour would run scared of the inevitable media onslaught (the scaremongering last time about the possible role of the SNP in a hung parliament was mindboggling), and Corbyn would have to eat a lot of crow about his attitudes to Scottish politics.

More likely would be a "confidence and supply" arrangement with whatever parties would be needed to make up a working majority. This was the prospect (a "rainbow coalition&quot the Lib Dems turned down when they got into bed with the Tories.

But let's not count chicken before they hatch ...

[Ken Burch]

24. Question is, would the LibDems accept that THIS time?

It appears that Tim Farron has carried on Nick Clegg's fixation with keeping the LibDems well to the right of Labour(Clegg did that even though doing so may have prevented the LibDems from moving past Labour as the main non-Tory party in 2010) and that he is far more comfortable keeping the Tories in power again, for some bizarre reason.

There was talk that the Tories might make some significant gains in Scotland at one point in the campaign-does that still seem likely?

[Denzil_DC]

25. There was a lot of wild talk after the local council elections.

It wilfully ignored the fact that in Scotland, council elections are run on the single transferrable vote system (a form of PR), which flattered the smaller parties, as is intended to happen. Projections were made (mainly by the Tories) in various seats on the basis of where they got most first preferences. The general election will be run on first-past-the-post, so it's nonsensical. Some of the excitement was a continuation of the idea they're taking over from Labour as the second-largest party in Scotland. But their percentage of the vote is worse than it was under Thatcher, so that's quite a comeback there, buddies.

I wouldn't discount the possibility the Tories might spring a surprise or two, not least due to tactical anti-SNP voting, but I'd be surprised (and saddened) if they made significant gains.

[Alice11111]

4. I'll believe it when I see it, especially after the terrorists

attack, and the Brits, Theresa May at NATO & others, taking on the US about it's intelligence. All of the Brits I know, which is a lot, even though most have kept their sense of humor, have gone batshit to the right. Oh, they hate DT, but love Boris Johnson & T May. They say they were not Tories before now, but they are losing everything to immigrants. Brussels has ruined their apples, healthcare, you name it.

I would love to see the Tories lose and have them overturn Brexit! Don't think it will happen. The majority are now Trumpster types who say they hate DT.

[Ken Burch]

6. The Tories have a problem in using Manchester to their advantage.

They can't really use it as an argument to re-elect the May government when this happened UNDER the May government, and when a strong case can be made that the New Labour-Tory "clash of civilizations" consensus may well have caused it.

The blood of the Manchester dead is partially on the hands of Theresa May, David Cameron, George W. Bush and Tony Blair. Had there been no invasion of Iraq, there would be no ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.

[Alice11111]

26. It amuses me when Repubs say Bush kept the US safe,

except for the big one, which his admin had prior intelligence about, but ignored.

[Tiggeroshii]

8. Where does the Welsh nationalist party lean?

Whose government would they join?

Because this is turning into a potential victory for the "failing" Corbyn.

[Ken Burch]

11. They are social democratic to socialist on economic policy, and strongly support the welfare state.

They also see themselves as the true protectors of the mining towns Thatcher ravaged and Neil Kinnock betrayed.

They would probably back a minority Labour government, but they'd want a disproportionately large increase in spending directed to Wales, and probably additional powers for the Welsh Assembly as well, plus further measures to protect the Welsh language itself and require its increased use in government agencies.

They are in theory a separatist party, but they've always had far less support in Wales than the SNP has in Scotland. A Welsh equivalent of the "Scotpocalypse&quot The Scottish slang term for the massive SNP breakthrough in Westminster elections in 2015), is years away, if it ever happens it all.

[Tiggeroshii]

12. So a labour winning 53-47, assuming pc join a labour government?

Another post on this thread mentioned they need to poll considerably ahead to make up for the disproportionate makeup of their districts. This is definitely a good start.

[Ken Burch]

13. Yes.

Oh, and the name of the Welsh nationalist party is Plaid Cymru(pronounced "Pled Com-rye&quot , which is Welsh for "Party of Wales", or PC for short.

[Tiggeroshii]

14. Oooo

Really hope this sticks and gets better. I'm worried the nationalism that's invoked from the bombing is going to help the Tories more than we would like.

[Denzil_DC]

18. Welshman here (living in Scotland, just to confuse y'all).

Plaid Cymru is pronounced Plied (as in "plying your trade&quot CUMree (or if you know phonetic notation, 'plaɪd 'kʌmri).

[Ken Burch]

21. Thanks for the correction.

I was at least close, wasn't I?

(My mental image of that party is people who all look like the old-time coal miners from THE CORN IS GREEN or Morgan The Goat from THE ENGLISHMAN WHO WENT UP A HILL BUT CAME DOWN A MOUNTAIN. That's stereotypical, but am I TOTALLY off on that?)

[GBizzle]

10. Cenk predicted Corbyn would win this

I think he may be on to something.

[Tiggeroshii]

15. Me too.

Really hope he's right!!

[WoonTars]

16. Wow!!!

I would dearly love to see that vile Theresa May handed a surprise defeat...her campaign has been a series of blunders up to this point...