Original founder of
@electionmapsuk
- but no longer at the helm having escaped to Oz. Creator of
#BirdTheFeckAtHome
(on FB). Easily distracted. Part-time fella.
I think people need to adjust their expectations as all the polls and MRPs set extreme expectations.
Labour - anything over 360 seats is excellent
Conservative - anything under 200 is awful
Lib Dems - since the Cleggopalypse, hitting 40 now would be a really strong recovery.
My brother’s made a shit-ton betting on the election. Among other things he won he bet:
- Liz Truss to lose to Lab
- LD to win Inverness
- Labour to get fewer votes than under Corbyn
- LD 71+ seats.
Jammy git!
There is not one politician alive who has less right to criticise a Lib Dem MP for “clowning around” than Lembit Opik.
Cheeky girls, asteroids, dodgy expense claims - he turned the safest Lib Dem seat in Wales into the safest Tory seat. 🤦
So it looks like the 2024 Lib Dem coalition is the same coalition of the Kennedy-Ashdown era: South West, Highlands, Mid Wales, etc - the one key difference is that the students of the late 90s and early 2000s are now stockbrokers who’ve moved to Surrey…
LIB DEM THREAD/long:
I was going to put together a rant on Labour - but everyone’s doing that so here are my thoughts on the Lib Dems - who didn’t just snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory, but somehow ended up leaderless, down on seats & losing in places even Clegg couldn’t
Another observation I noted from
#LE2023
is just how ruthlessly efficiently the Libs capitalised on the Tiverton & Honiton by-election.
(Maps from
@BNHWalker
’s awesome effort on the New Statesman website).
Posting this to show that the damage cut both ways - as my timeline full of Lab blaming Lib and Lib blaming Lab...
Notice that in these seats are IDS, Raab, John Redwood...
Loophole on local election laws means that whilst you can’t put posters up in public places for the Victorian Elections, you can park bikes, and you can put poster-boards on bikes. 🤔
These are cropping up everywhere.
PPS... reading through the comments I’d forgotten what a pile of festering turd political twitter can be... basically Mos Eisley Cantina for angry nerds.
This mapping “comeback” will be shorter than Joe Kinear’s return to football.
Lib Dems: “let’s not get carried away”
Also Lib Dems: “we’re gonna win in Leicester!”, “we’re gonna win in Suffolk”, “Let’s do something big in Croydon”
Food for thought... (and yes I know that lots of LD voters would not back Lab, etc.)
Also interesting that the Lab vote in the LD targets here is approx. 50% higher than the LD votes in the Lab target seats... (6k, versus 4k).
As you were.
@Liam_Holman99
Blame all those Labour activists campaigning in Mid Beds only 40 mins away - when the election hasn’t been declared, and where the bookies have them third.
So twitter tells me Lib Dems have basically all but stood aside for Labour in 2 seats, but Labour activists are furious about the 3rd…
If Libs do throw kitchen sink at Mid Beds it’ll be 🔵 or 🟡 but it’ll come down to what 🔴 do there as it will be close.
🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿
PPPS why are so many people who supported the winning side in
#GE2019
so grumpy still? Surely they should be the chipper ones - but they’re all about as positive a Miss Haversham... 😂
If I was Labour strategist I would be pushing very hard to hold Bristol and take Brighton from the Greens.
Once they are in power they will inherit a mess and have a tough time. The Greens will surge - but locking them out of the Commons will help contain it…
Greens - holding Brighton without Lucas will be a solid result. Even 1 seat above that takes them to new levels of giddiness.
Reform - more than 1 seat and they break their record (and will split, but that’s for another day).
All those people are not collecting data, not leafletting, not getting the GOTV ready for Thursday… all those attendees are already going to vote Reform anyway.
This is just a big Presidential cosplay session by Farage...
Elderly Labour activist attacked...
Lib Dem candidate calling for police protection for threats on her family...
Tory campaign HQ vandalised and grafittied...
***THIS SHIT HAS TO STOP***
This isn’t how politics used to be conducted. We’re better than that.
LD friend of mine a few elections back canvassing a little old lady:
“I’ll always vote for you but please keep it quiet. I always tell the Tories I’ll vote for them so they’ll give me a lift to the polls”
“We’ll give you a lift to the poll”
“No thanks - they have nicer cars”.
The debate (by angry Labour supporters) on tactical voting and Libs is ridiculous.
The amount of LD tactical voting for Lab in BOTH Lab targets, and the amount of tactical voting for LD by Lab in their seat was MASSIVE.
It should actually put a shiver down the Tories spine…
It all now hinges on a new leader. Pick another coalition veteran and hardcore FBPEr then they will have learned nothing.
And the pool to choose from is, like last time and the time before, woefully small. They should have listened to Vince.
Ends.
Two election expenses that I can’t see how their respective parties will keep under the spending limits.
- Reform’s bot farms that are working overdrive
- Ed Davey’s life insurance
- Luckily for the Tories a complete brass neck costs nothing
@ElectionMapsUK
Note in this case the Lib Dems had stood aside and backed the Green Party. There is closer co-operation between the two parties in Oxfordshire than almost anywhere else...
Thread: If anyone wonders about the whole Lib-Lab vote splitting thing & why this massively favours
#TeamBlue
in election after election, check out David Hallam (ex Lab MEP)’s Twitter
I understand he’s the “Pro-Bono Press officer” for
#NorthShropshire
Lab in the by-elex.
1/7
“Dear Lib Dems and Greens,
Thanks so much for effectively standing aside in Tamworth so we have a better shot at it.”
*said no Labour activist on Twitter, ever.
Conservative HQ put a massive bet on LDs winning 50+ seats. It’s the only explanation.
This is a great tactical squeeze message for Labour voters in LD target seats.
Some of the Conservative collapses are all the more remarkable when you consider their position 2 elections ago.
Take South Oxfordshire. 1 Lib Dem ward and no Greens or Labour. Two elections later Tories reduced to sharing one ward with Labour…
I bet all those Labour 🌹campaigners working in Mid Beds when the election has not even been called and Uxbridge is only 40 minutes drive away are beginning to question their judgement…
@RECNeil
@ek31986786
Ah Twitter, never change.
Last time I checked the country is called the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, not the “United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Orkney, Shetland, Skye, Ynys Môn, Westholm, Bardsey and the Isle of Dogs”
I just wanted point out that
@electionmapsuk
now has more
followers than the BNP. Breaking my
#impartiality
but now delighted to see map nerds beating extremists on Twitter for once! 🏆🥇
Seeing it got retweeted a bit, to clarify the second map is
@ElectionMapsUK
’s projection of the Mid Bedfordshire result if projected across the country.
Sir Ed Davey is now performing a PAT electrical safety test on a hedge trimmer at a repair shop in Bicester, Oxfordshire.
I’m not sure if there is a metaphor this time… but it’s all part of the Lib Dem plan to draw attention to the party and their policies.
The Revoke policy was unnecessary. They were trying to keep clear blue water from Labour by being “more remainy”. This was wrong for several reasons. Firstly, the seats they needed to win were conservative, not inner-London remain seats. Soft remainy Tories don’t like “a scene”.
@lib_urgh_al
It’s the same in Australia - a battle between the “Labo[u]r are fascist, let’s be angry about everything” wing and the “let’s protect the butterflies and be nice” wing.
The later win many more votes but the former take up all the oxygen and noise.
@syllibre
You’re missing the point 😁
Students who voted LD back in 1997 are not students anymore - they’re middle-aged professionals living in the commuter belt…
68 million people to choose from in this land that gave us the words of Shakespeare and the wisdom of Attenborough.
And the *best* we can muster now, THE BEST TWO PEOPLE OUT OF 68 MILLION, are a dithering bumblebee with an unspecified number of children and Che Guavara’s Grandad
But the mistakes were happening thick and fast. Firstly was the Presidential style campaign. Yes - both Corbyn and Johnson were big dominant names - but Jo Swinson wasn’t. It came across as arrogant. “Your next Prime Minister” was ambitious but foolhardy.
Apparently here’s where last 2 seats are at:
Reform lead Lab by 120 votes in the current recount for South Basildon & East Thurrock. (Was a Con seat)
LD were 1,500 votes ahead of SNP in Inverness, Skye & West-Ross-shire. Recount tomorrow morning. (Was a safe-ish SNP seat)
Over the last few weeks the Tory vote has been holding up much better in local by-elections than the polls suggest (although generally coming off much lower bases).
This could mean that there are a lot more shy Tories are out there - and that the polls are wrong or…
Twitter be like:
Conservative: We nearly won!
Lib Dem: We won!
Brexit Party: Leave won!
Labour: You can’t draw any conclusions from one election!
Everyone: Loonies beat UKIP!
#BreconByelection
#BreconandRadnorshire
Jeezus, that state of political twitter and data today.
- Farmers Weekly relying on Twitter polls.
- 30p Lee faking his Electoral Calculus forecast
- Plaid in Wrecsam not understanding the difference between a poll and a dude in Canada mapping his guess.
🤦♂️
Secondly, Revoke wasn’t all that democratic and played well into the hands of the Tories. Thirdly, making a policy just because another party is making their policy similar to yours is just wrong. If you believe in something stick to it.
Last map for a long time... An estimate* of which seats the Tories would have lost had the BXP chosen to stand. I made it only 12 - so Nigel Farage didn't win Boris his majority - but did increase it by 24.
Due to mulitiple requests here are the 40 Lab and 1 PC seats that would have fallen had the BXP and Con votes joined forces. 39 would have gone Con, the two Barnsley seats BXP.