In Britain, Labour Looks Poised for Victory

by Chris Bowers, Tue May 03, 2005 at 08:43:59 AM EDT

Hard as it may be to believe, with only two days before the general election, polling data in the UK currently makes it look as though Labour will cruise to another huge victory. The last six polls point to a comfortable, eight-point Labour lead:

      Labour   Tory    Liberal	 Other	 Date
NOP	40	30	  21	   9	 4/24
Pop	40	31	  21	   8	 4/26
Com	39	31	  23	   6	 4/28
ICM	39	31	  22	   8	 4/29
Mori	39	29	  22	  10	 5/01
YGuv	36	33	  24	   7	 5/01
Mean	39	31	  22	   8
2001	41	32	  18	   9

Overall, this points to a small Liberal Democrat gain at the expense of both Labour and the Tories. If the two oldest polls are removed, the situation improves slightly more for the Liberals, as they rise to 23 and Labour falls to 38. With only the two most recent polls, it becomes Labour 37.5, Tory 31, Liberal Democrat 23, and Other 8.5. Personally, as the result of the Incumbent Rule, which probably translates into the UK, I would expect Labour's numbers to drop another point or two by Election Day, with the Tories and Liberals each picking up one point each.

Realistically, the worst-case scenario for Labour is probably something like 34%, to 33% for the Tories, to 24% for the Liberal Democrats to 9% for other parties. Even in this scenario, Labour maintains a comfortable majority of at least 40 seats. It now seems almost certain that Blair will win a third term.

Update: I have found a page, updated yesterday, that discusses if there is any possibility Labour will not form a majority government. Here is the conclusion:

Pushing the boundaries of the possible, we could ask what would be the effect of both large-scale pollster error and anti-Labour tactical voting. This would be a very worst-case scenario for Labour and an extreme best-case scenario for the Conservatives.... Even in this extreme case, Labour still has a slender majority of 16 seats in parliament. It would appear the election is over. The only question now is the margin.

Tags: Foreign Elections (all tags)

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did anyone actully think

It would not come out this way.

by THE MODERATE 2005-05-03 08:55AM | 0 recs

4a2fab88-ed3b-47a4-8f14-3ec8a24504ac_normal

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Re: did anyone actully think

Well, early on, I think there was a chance that the Conservatives would pull their act together enough to force Labour to the table without a majority, but that's been long gone, given their pretty lame effort.

LD's have of late been undercounted in the polls relative to actual turnout, and I doubt Labour will be able to totally stem apathy, so it'd be a surprise if the polls were correct, but not the outcome.

by Jerome Armstrong 2005-05-03 09:04AM | 0 recs

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Yes

I thought there was a real chance of a hung Parliament. But the oppositon hasn't been strong enough. LibDems have done about as well as could be expected, but the Tories are truly hapless. It's a party in need of an electoral mercy-killing.

by aretino 2005-05-03 09:08AM | 0 recs

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Re: Yes

That might well be delivered on Thursday.

by Chris Bowers 2005-05-03 09:09AM | 0 recs

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on the polls

Polling Report has a overview of their predictions, basically, either YouGov is right, or the others.

by Jerome Armstrong 2005-05-03 09:08AM | 0 recs

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Dismal

A truly dismal result if Labour and Blair are able to win. What does this say about democracy when the two leading nations of the West are led by these pathological liars and the voters don't even punish them at the polls for their gross actions?

I feel i owe an apology to those people in places like Serbia ( Milosovic) Russia (Putin) and any number of Latin-America states, i've scorned for their ill-informed choice of leaders. Knowing what the voters in the U.S. and Britain must know, and still re-electing these thugs is unbelievable.

by majella77 2005-05-03 10:08AM | 0 recs

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would be interesting to know

how big a landslide Labour would have if Blair hadn't taken the UK into Iraq. It's possible that it might not have made that much of a difference in terms of seats, since so many of the seats in the UK are safe for one of the parties.

Having lived in the UK during the 1992 campaign, I remember when serious political scientists argued that Labour could never win another nationwide election, because they would never be able to crack the middle-class suburban vote. Then in 1997 everyone assumed the Tories would come back strong in the next campaign, without having to defend the Major government. It is astonishing to me to see the Tories get their asses kicked for the third time in a row.

by desmoinesdem 2005-05-03 11:05AM | 0 recs

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Re: would be interesting to know

Very crudely -

No clause IV = permanent Conservative minority

The British public is generally quite progressive (when compared to the US). If Labour could be trusted on the economy, it was only a matter of time. The Tories are in grave danger right now. I think they will stare into the abyss much like Labour did after 1983 in a few days time. They are an old, disorganized, directionless bunch that is in danger of becoming a minority party. I don't think this'll happen, but the Tories have not yet accepted they need to change. Until they do - which I think this election could well accomplish - things won't get any better for them.

by Ben P 2005-05-03 07:51PM | 0 recs

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Regional variations

Despite the stable lead in overall polls, all parties/pundits are making a lot of the variations taking place in the key marginal seats which could throw up a lot of anomalies. Not saying Labour won't win fairly easily, but need to be wary of assuming the polls will correlate exactly to number of seats gained.

Tory campaign summed up by a comic setback. The tax disc on Michael Howard's battle bus had expired!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/blog/4508069.stm

by jdouglas 2005-05-03 01:18PM | 0 recs

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Re: Regional variations

Regional variations are VERY important in the British system. In 1997, the Lib Dem vote actually decreased slighly, but they more than doubled their seats (altough that was still far below what their share of PR would have gotten them).

Also in 2001, Labor did better in its marginal seats, so their lose of seats was few than a uniformed national swing would have indicated.

by Corey Olomon 2005-05-03 01:49PM | 0 recs

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Re: Regional variations

The Lib Dems did not double their tally last time but made a net gain of 6 seats (winning 8, but losing 2 they alrady held). Of course as a proportional increase, this was nonetheless significant, and did take them to a record total.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/vote2001/results_constituencies/default.stm

Also, to answer a point below. Yes, in theory a Labour government could be returned but Blair lose his seat. In the 1960s or so, the Conservatives selected as their leader Lord Home, who as a peer was ineligible to speak in the House of Commons, so I think a sitting MP in a safe seat agreed to retire (probably in return for a peerage) to get him straight into parliament at a byelection. This sort of thing could happen again or the process of selecting a new leader could begin (99% likely to be Gordon Brown). Blair's constituency has been crowded with candidates (more than usual, many of whom hope to protest against the war. Notable is Reg Keys whose son was killed in Iraq.

However, due to the bias of the system, an independent candidate is highly unlikely to be returned. there is only one in Parliament at the moment, who ran on a specialised, local Save-our-hospital ticket, while in the '97 election, BBC correspondent Martin Bell ran on an anti-sleaze platform against disgraced Tory Neil Hamilton and won, largely due to both Lib Dem and Labour candidates pulling out to give him a clear run. Both Lib Dems and Tories are still in the race in Blair's constituency, as well as multiple anti-war candidates, so even if the protest vote was large enough (unlikely in a very tribal Labour area), it would probably be too divided to topple Blair.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/html/506.stm

(One candidate seems to have officially changed their name to Blairout! That's devotion for you)

by jdouglas 2005-05-03 03:02PM | 0 recs

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Re: Regional variations

I said they doubled in 1997. They went from around 22 to 40 something.

by Corey Olomon 2005-05-03 08:01PM | 0 recs

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Re: Regional variations

Sorry. Was reading this pretty late! My fault.

by jdouglas 2005-05-04 12:42AM | 0 recs

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What if...

I don't know much about the english election system, but from what I know its based on districts and each representative is elected by one district, I know that Blair's disctrict is a safe labour district but is there any chance that labour could win the elections but people from his district could vote against him as a protest vote?

What would happen then? He wouldn't be in the house so wouldn't be able to be the Prime Minister? Would Gordon Brown be the PM instead?

That would be a funny thing to happen....

by vitor 2005-05-03 01:33PM | 0 recs

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Re: What if...

That happens occisionally in parlimentary systems. Its up to the party how to handle it. They can either replace the leader and therefore the Prime Minister or get some loyal person in a ultra-safe district to resign and have the PM run in the resulting by-election (candidates aren't required to live in thier districts).

This has happen in two relatively recent provencial elections in Canada. In, I think, 1982ish, the Liberals won a majority in the Quebec National Assymbly (their uni-chamber parliment), but their leader, Brochard, actually lost his seat. In 1988, while the Progressive Conservatives won re-election to the Alberta Legislative Assembly, its leader, Premier (the Canadian version of Governor) Getty, lost his own seat. In both cases, loyal back-benchers resigned and the Premier was returned in the by-election.

by Corey Olomon 2005-05-03 01:58PM | 0 recs