Fuck

[LeftishBrit]

Fuckfuckfuckfuck fuckfuckFUCKfuckfuck fuckity fuck fuck-a-doodle-doo!

That is all!

[madaboutharry]

1. I just heard the same thing

from British friends of mine who live in the UK.

[dorkzilla]

2. I second that sentiment! nt

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. Cameron?

Or that Scotland, having just voted NOT to split from Britain, has just turned around and seems to be back in a 'splitter!' mood?

[T_i_B]

5. Labour didn't run the greatest of campaigns

Especially in Scotland by all accounts. Ended up alienating the Scots and then alienating anti-SNP English voters.

[Denzil_DC]

10. It wasn't really a "splitter"-based vote.

It took votes from people who aren't in favour of a further referendum, plus those who're not currently in favour of one any time soon (like Nicola Sturgeon and myself, among many others), to get to the 56-seat final tally and 50.2% of the votes in Scotland.

It's more to do with Labour (and the other opposition parties) in Scotland being totally flat-footed and tone-deaf to the mood among many of the electorate. They banged on about a further referendum much, much more than the SNP did. They went heavily negative when people were hungry for a positive vision - in that way, they treated this election as a continuation of the recent referendum, rather than a contest in its own right.

I linked to focus group research in an earlier thread that showed this tactic was utterly counterproductive as it made people more likely to vote SNP - whether because they were in favour of the idea or whether they were disgusted at the scaremongering tactics is open to debate.

What may provoke a mood for a further move to "split" sooner rather than later is the reaction from the rest of the UK, and how things pan out if and when we have an EU referendum, for instance. That could lead to irresistible pressure for another Scottish referendum if the vote is to leave the EU.

I share in the mood of "Fuck!" about Cameron finally getting a very slim mandate of his own. It's some small comfort that the Con/Lib Dem alliance had a 40-seat majority, whereas Cameron's majority is now in single figures. He'll be without the marginal moderating influence of the Lib Dems, but more hostage to the further right wing within his party, which has never embraced him wholeheartedly, if at all.

There are also a number of scandals due to break fully down the line which may put a different complexion on things and even provoke by-elections. All the major Westminster parties have been complicit in covering up organized sexual abuse of vulnerable children and adults, for instance, and it looks like that issue will come to a head under Cameron's premiership.

[still_one]

4. What happened? The polls said there was only a one point difference

[Denzil_DC]

11. The running polls got it wrong.

People kept falling into the trap of being excited by movements which were within or on the boundaries of the margins of error, losing sight of the fact that there were a large number of undecideds until very, very late in the campaign. The anti-Labour media slants and scaremongering, especially in the later stages, won't have helped, and the logical conclusion is that enough of those undecideds plumped for the Conservatives where it mattered electorally, giving them victory.

In the end, exit polling contradicted the running polls, provoking skepticism and disbelief among pundits and the general populace before the results started to be declared. The exit polls showed the Conservatives with a clear, if not large, majority. That's what's panned out in reality.

Ironically, the one place where the running polls proved accurate was Scotland.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. One last minute poll wasn't made public, because they thought it was wrong

“Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory”

As in the Scottish Independence Referendum, where Survation shared “joint honours” with Ipsos Mori for accuracy, Survation conducted a voting intention telephone poll the day before the election (Wednesday) with three specific attributes:
...
This was conducted over the afternoon and evening of Wednesday 6th May, as close as possible to the election to capture any late “swing” to any party – the same method we used in our telephone polls during the Independence Referendum that produced a 54% and a 53% figure for “no”.

This poll produced figures of:

Survation Telephone, Ballot Paper Prompt:
CON 37%
LAB 31%
LD 10
UKIP 11
GRE 5
Others (including the SNP) 6%
Which would have been very close to the final result.

We had flagged that we were conducting this poll to the Daily Mirror as something we might share as an interesting check on our online vs our telephone methodology, but the results seemed so “out of line” with all the polling conducted by ourselves and our peers – what poll commentators would term an “outlier” – that I “chickened out” of publishing the figures – something I’m sure I’ll always regret.

http://survation.com/snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory/

Those are GB percentages (ie excluding NI); figures for the whole of the UK with just 1 seat remaining (which will be a tight Con-Lib Dem race; add 0.1% to the figures below for each of those, probably) are:
Con 36.9%
Lab 30.5%
LD 7.8%
UKIP 12.6%
Green 3.8%
SNP 4.7%
PC 0.6%
NI parties about 2.2%

[Denzil_DC]

14. Heh. Oh dear. Bad call!

I don't know the margin of error on that poll, but even those figures wouldn't be that far outside the usual MoE, so it would probably have been seen as an outlier earlier in the election.

Funnily enough, the SNP steadfastly refused to publicly base its campaigning on the polling, despite the fact that the seemingly pretty wild projections of the SNP winning 50+ seats with swings in the mid- to high 20s were borne out by many reports from on-the-ground canvassers on Twitter etc. People just kept their heads down and worked their asses off door-to-door. The results are there to see.

[fredamae]

6. Do They use

"corporate voting machines" too?

[non sociopath skin]

7. No, they don't.

So this is a genuine result, using the voting system which the Great British Public decided in a referendum to keep. So they have no-one to blame but themselves when things go tits up.

The Skin

[fredamae]

8. Well, then..It is

as you say....The People's Choice.
Damn.

[mwooldri]

19. If you call council employees "voting machines".

Paper and pen. Counted by hand.

[Triana]

9. I'd say.

So sorry. Heard a lot of it on the radio last night. DAMN disappointing!

[malthaussen]

12. Looks like a bloodbath

Heads are rolling from Hell to Huddersfield.

-- Mal

[TBF]

15. Looking at many sources this morning

What do you think happened? I have read some leftist critique that Labor lost it's way. Frankly, I'm worried that we could see the same type of result here in 2016. That is one reason I am pushing so hard for Bernie because at least he doesn't waffle or spend too much time trying to compromise with idiots, and he speaks very clearly about income inequality. I am hoping that will resonate with people. I really don't think I can cope with Scott Walker as president.

[lovemydog]

16. I'm really sorry my UK friends.

I enjoy reading your threads.

Interested in hearing more commentary.

For now you folks are probably in somewhat a state of disbelief.

[jeff47]

17. Huh...Conservative-lite didn't work. Oh well, time to run Conservateive-lite in the US again.

It worked so well in 2010 and 2014 here, I'm surprised it failed! Honest! There's no sarcasm whatsoever here!

[shenmue]

18. There go my plans to move there

[mwooldri]

20. Nothing but bloody Tory. :(

Locally, our Lib Dem candidate came second but the Tory vote increased significantly. In the borough council the people returned a Tory majority. They do have some opposition this time in the form of a Residents Association group. No other party got a look in, and the UKIP representation has gone.

The bad thing is that the local Lib Dem party machine has been decimated for a few years.... going into coalition with the Tories and reversing on policy.... and wiped out locally since 2011....

There is no opposition to the Tories.

[potone]

21. Indeed.

Could somebody PLEASE explain to me why this happened. Are Cameron and the Tories really that popular?? Do people want more austerity?? Do they want to leave the EU?? Brits, please help me understand this.