General Election 2024

[Chest Rockwell]

51 minutes ago, JLM said:

Can’t believe there are even boat people in the duck ponds now. 

They are really small boats.

 

Edit: just to say that I've just seen Chris Philp go down my road in person. He didn't stop at my door though...

Edited July 3 by Chest Rockwell

[Duke]

50 minutes ago, Just Some Guy said:

Sometimes a bad choice of words is just that?

Yeah, that was my first instinct, though it was interesting the other people in the conversation, activists from both sides, went "tut typical". It's not exactly a stretch from the language they always use on leaflets, so out of context it seems pretty benign.

[Scratch]

Living in Nigel Farage’s new constituency, our estate has of course received a few letters from Reform. What we’ve noticed, though, is that each house with a couple got a single copy of each letter addressed solely to the male.

[SuperBacon]

1 hour ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Edit: just to say that I've just seen Chris Philp go down my road in person. He didn't stop at my door though...

Penny Mordaunt walked past me the other day. Big massive power walk on her.

Reminder that we're less than 48 hours from this little herbert being in power.

 

[BigJag]

Why did Morduant have such a prominent role at the coronation?

Hopefully the Ilford residents vote sensibly and get rid of Streeting.

[westlondonmist]

2 minutes ago, BigJag said:

Why did Morduant have such a prominent role at the coronation?

Hopefully the Ilford residents vote sensibly and get rid of Streeting.

Because she was Leader of the Privy Council, and that is one of their roles apparently but because the Queen seemed to live forever you didn't see others in the same position having to do their Conan impression.

[Carbomb]

1 minute ago, westlondonmist said:

Because she was Leader of the Privy Council, and that is one of their roles apparently but because the Queen seemed to live forever you didn't see others in the same position having to do their Conan impression.

With that hat, she really looked like the world's most aggressive air stewardess.

[FLips]

I said it in this thread before but Wes Streeting looks dead behind the eyes and really unsettles me.

[SuperBacon]

11 minutes ago, FLips said:

I said it in this thread before but Wes Streeting looks dead behind the eyes and really unsettles me.

Can someone find the tweet he deleted where he said a "gang" called him uni boy or something at a train station as he had a suitcase on wheels.

Edit: get in.

 

Edited July 3 by SuperBacon
UNI BOY!!!!!

[Scratch]

I did have a good laugh at the comparisons being made between Penny Moudaunt’s coronation costume and the Poundland branding.

[wordsfromlee]

1 hour ago, SuperBacon said:

Penny Mordaunt walked past me the other day. Big massive power walk on her.

Reminder that we're less than 48 hours from this little herbert being in power.

 

"Can I shock you? I like Labour"

[SuperBacon]

Usually hate this sort of thing, but Cassette Boy always does it best.

 

[JNLister]

6 hours ago, westlondonmist said:

Because she was Leader of the Privy Council, and that is one of their roles apparently but because the Queen seemed to live forever you didn't see others in the same position having to do their Conan impression.

And had Johnson not just been toppled, it would have been Jacob Rees-Mogg in that position. And he would almost certainly have had weedy enough arms to drop it.

[JNLister]

Very late this year, but here’s your traditional UKFF “What happens on election day?” guide:

 

When and where can I vote?

 

You can vote between 7am and 10pm (though if you’re in a queue at 10pm they should let you vote.) You must vote at an assigned polling station near your house. If you’re registered to vote, you should have received a poll card in the post which tells you where your polling station is. If you’re uncertain, https://www.gov.uk/contact-electoral-registration-office will tell you where to find details.

If you have received a postal vote and not posted it yet, you can hand it in at any polling station in your constituency. If you have applied for a postal vote and not received it, you’ll need to get it reissued in person at your local authority’s electoral services office (see link above).

Unlike in previous general elections (outside of Northern Ireland) you will need to bring photo ID to vote in person. There’s a list of acceptable forms on the back of the poll card

You do not need to bring the poll card with you, it just saves a little time.

You may be asked for your voter number by somebody outside of the polling station (ie outside the building). You do not have to give it as this will be an activist for one of the parties. They are simply keeping track of people who have previously told them they’ll be voting for the party so that they can chase up any who haven’t yet voted and remind them to do so, offer them a lift, etc.

 

How do I vote?

You’ll have a ballot paper with a list of candidates. You can only choose one, which you should indicate by putting a cross in the box by their name. Technically you don’t have to use a cross or use the box, as long as you clearly indicate one candidate only. The candidates and their agents will then argue about what you meant. Theoretically you can draw a big spunking cock with a drop of jizz landing in one of the boxes. Don’t do this. The people who count votes and administer elections work hard and you don’t have to waste their time. If you indicate no candidates, indicate multiple candidates, or indicate your identity in any way, your vote will not count.

You may notice your ballot paper has a number on it. Very very technically it could be linked back to you and your vote revealed but in reality the closest to confirmation this ever happened is rumours the police used to make a note of people who voted Communist in the 70s and keep an eye on them. The number is there for three main reasons. It shows it’s a genuine ballot paper. It’s quick to check it was actually issued to a voter (rather than filled in and stuffed in the box after closing time). And if you arrive and somebody has already voted pretending to be you, officials can use the number to retrieve what will now be a disputed ballot paper and put it aside along with an “interim” ballot paper that you get to vote on, with the relevant ballot paper counted when the issue is settled. (This is largely irrelevant now we have the photo ID requirement.)

 

What else happens on election day?

Broadcasters have a policy of not mentioning anything that could influence voting (whether that’s political news or levels of turnout) during voting time so the news will mainly be footage of politicians casting votes. Similarly polling companies won’t publish any new information that could be misinterpreted as saying how people are actually polling (as it being close/not close could affect whether people bother voting.)

Somebody on social media will post the picture of a wall that has a polling station sign above a “Do Not Sit On The Fence” sign and far too many people will think it is from today.

 

What happens when polls close?

The broadcasters will report the results of the exit poll at 10pm, which John Curtice and co have produced during the day. Here’s how it works; some details may be misassumptions on my part:

It’s not a normal opinion poll but instead involves setting up outside around 100-150 polling stations and asking around 100-150 people coming out of each one to fill out a replica ballot paper in secret. Usually that’s done by asking every 10^th person to make it a bit more random. This process removes some of the main drawbacks of ordinary polls: people who haven’t yet decided how they’ll vote, people who might not vote, and people who are shy about telling a pollster (even on a computer) who they’ll vote for. You know people in the exit poll have definitely voted.

The rest of the benefits come from what you do with the results. It’s not about the actual numbers at each place but rather the change there compared with the last election. (They always use the same places and I believe when they add new ones, they have to measure them at one election but not include the data in the exit poll, instead just recording it for comparison at the next election.)

The key is that each of the polling stations is in a small local area has at least one strong characteristic, eg a place that voted heavily for Brexit or has a lot of retired people or has a lot of Muslim women. Curtice and co can then draw out patterns of change across different groups, eg “Lib Dems are up a little among Brexit supporting areas” or “Conservatives are down a lot in places with a strong Jewish population.”

They then take each seat’s result from last time and apply all the patterns of changes that are relevant to its particular demographics/politics/social backgrounds. They then turn the adjusted vote shares into a percentage chance for each party winning, which mainly depends on how big the gap between the parties is and how consistent and reliable the data is for the particular changes you applied to that seat. (For example, if Labour is down 50 percent in the results from one heavily Muslim polling station and unchanged at 9 others, it averages five percent. However, you’d be much more confident about applying that change nationally if they were down four to six percent at all 10 polling stations.)

Finally they add up the percentages to find a national seat total: for example, if you have a 50 percent chance of winning a particular seat, that counts as 0.5 seats towards your forecast total.

The big thing to remember is that this is only a forecast of the total number of seats for each party. Unlike some MRP polls during the campaign, the exit poll doesn’t try to predict the winner of any specific seat.

The stated aim is to get within 15-20 seats either way of the actual result for the main parties. Since the current method of doing it started, they’ve hit that every time and only got the result “wrong” once (2015 they had the Conservatives just short of a majority and they actually got a very small majority.)

Usually there’ll be one revision/adjustment to the exit poll forecast once real results come in and then later in the night the broadcasters will switch to projecting a result based entirely on real results.

 

When do results come out and what do they mean?

The first results usually come within 45 minutes to an hour and will almost certainly be in Sunderland or Newcastle who race to do the first. (Partly because they intentionally try to do so and have the manpower and coordination to be very efficient, partly because they are in densely populated cities so you don’t need to move the ballot boxes far and partly because, while nobody will admit it publicly, there’s zero chance that miscounting a few ballots in haste will affect the result.) Labour will win the seats and usually analysts will look at the swing between Labour and the Conservatives (or vice versa) and see if that matches the exit poll. This time it probably won’t tell us much, partly because so much of the pattern this time is the collapsing Tory vote going in multiple directions and partly because they are expected to lose much more vote share in places where they did well at the last election.

Generally some inner city seats and a few towns declare around 12-1 (when we start to get an idea that "yeah, the exit poll story is probably right"), most seats declare between 1 and 3 (and we'll pretty much know the big picture outcome for near-certain), and then after that it’s mainly more rural seats (which are usually predictable and only really matter if something in the overall result is still in doubt (which could be the case if there's a Conservative-Lib Dem battle for second most MPs.)

That pattern is partly because it simply takes longer to get all the ballot boxes to one place in big rural constituencies and partly because they tend to be places where only one seat gets counted in a venue (unlike cities which tend to count all their seats in the same location), so there’s no economies of scale admin-wise.

Normally I have to say in this bit that because Labour usually do better in seats that declare early and that you should ignore the fact that they'll often win 100 or so seats before the Conservatives get even a handful and instead pay attention to seats that change hands. The pattern may not be quite as misleading as normal this time.

 

What happens when the results are in?

Historically this is the bit where there’s a direct inverse relationship between how much I write about hung parliaments and the likelihood of it happening. To break that pattern I’ll stick to some bullet points:

• We don’t elect a Prime Minister or a government. We just elect MPs.
• The Prime Minister chooses who the government is. The King choose who the Prime Minister is when there’s a vacancy.
• The Prime Minister is the person who is “best placed to command a majority in the House of Commons”. In practice that means the leader of the largest party or group of parties (they don’t have to have a majority). The PM remains the PM until they resign, which they do when it’s clear somebody else better meets the criteria. This can either be because they’ve been replaced as party leader (either by force or by stepping down as a personal choice) or because they are no longer the largest party/group. That, of course, usually happens through the changes of MPs in a general election.
• If a party other than that of the Government wins a majority of seats, that’s a very simple process. The PM goes to see the King and resigns and then the King asks the other party’s leader to form a new government. This usually happens the day after the election – there’s no transition period (other than half an hour or so where we don’t actually have a government.)
• If nobody wins a majority, there’s negotiations to see if anyone can form a group (coalition or less formal arrangement) that has more MPs than the existing government (and any group they form). The existing PM and government remain in place until that happens (as was the case in 2010.) (Technically David Cameron’s government continued uninterrupted after the 2015 election, it’s just he replaced all the Lib Dem members.)

 

What’s going to happen?

Put it this way: either Rishi Sunak or John Curtice are losing their job on Friday. While it seems like the opinion polls have been very varied, that’s really just over analysis. When done properly, you’d expect 95 percent of polls to vary 3% either way of the “real” figure (the remaining five percent, which vary more, are what “outliers” really means and aren’t necessarily badly produced.) So if you’ve got a lot of polls that are all being done correctly, you’d expect as much as a 6% difference in the figures in different polls for the main parties.

That’s about the case here and unless there’s a systemic error (ie something that affected most polling companies), we’re likely looking at vote shares along the lines of Labour in the high 30s or low 40s, the Conservatives in the high teens or low 20s, Reform in the mid to high teens and the Lib Dems in the low to mid teens.

As for how that translates to seats, it’s effectively certain that means Labour with a significant majority. Most attempts to simply translate the national share to seats have the Conservatives somewhere between 50 and 150, while most attempts to specifically forecast every seat have them on around 100-125. There’s some uncertainty because the swing against them winds up in the zone where an unusually high number of the seats they might lose are likely to be very close either way. There’s also some uncertainty because there’s never been a Government party collapse from one election to another like the one that’s forecast, so it’s hard to know the modelling for votes > seats actually works as well as normal in this scenario.

Long story short, the best outcome for the  Conservatives in the “unlikely but plausible” zone is them doing a bit worse than in 1997, which still likely means their worst result ever, while the other end of the “unlikely but plausible” scale is them well under 100 seats and possibly not being behind the Lib Dems in seats, making the Lib Dems the official opposition. It’s also not completely impossible they get fewer votes than Reform nationally or Sunak loses his seat.

Either way, if Keir Starmer isn’t PM by the end of Friday, we’re not just living in a Tory country, we’re living in a world where market research ceases to exist as an industry and a world where we start having to question whether maths works.

 

[Daaaaaad!]

Never ceases to amaze me. Nice one @JNLister