Monday Call - August 9 2004 [next planned update Wednesday]
August 9th, 2004
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How the pundits will get the next General Election wrong
We believe that the result of the next General Election will be seen as one of the great upsets of modern times to rank alongside 1970, February 1974 and 1992 when Edward Heath, Harold Wilson and John Major respectively defied the pundits, and to a large extent the opinion polls, to gain unexpected victories. A Guardian feature by two Labour thinkers today notes “..Given the volatility of contemporary politics, it is by no means impossible that Labour will lose in a reverse landslide.”
We believe that the “experts” will call it wrongly because they will apply the swings to the partys’ vote shares in pre-election opinion polls on a uniform national basis that will produce seat projections for Labour that are far in excess of what they actually get.
We believe that there is an inherent “fault” in the seat totals from last time because Labour won upto 40 extra Tory seats as a result of Lib Dems voting for them and not their own party - something they are much less likey to do now creating the real possibility of serious seat losses over and above the national swing.
We believe that the pundits and the pollsters always seriously underestimate the roles that local party machines have in getting their votes out. This will be particularly diffifcult for Labour this time because of the collapse in the number of party members, councillors and other activists - factors that will aid Lib Dem targeting and create new possibilities for seats to change hands outside the national swing. We also think that many local Tory organisations are in better shape than they were.
We cannot yet predict what the unexpected outcome will be but we stick by our call on Labour to win most General Election seats because this market is NOT about gaining a majority.
But we say BUY Lib Dem in the General Election spread markets because we believe the party will get more than the 70 seats - the current spread position. When we first made this call on June 16 the BUY level was 58 seats so those who took the advice have already chalked up some nice profits.
We said SELL Labour at 346 - it’s now down four and we still say sell. It went up to that high level after the media bought Downing Street’s spin that the 27% swing against Labour at Birmingham Hodge Hill and the loss of Leicester South meant that the two by-elections on on July 15 had ended in a “score draw“.
LAB 342-350 (-4): CON 212-220 (+3): LIBD 66-70 (+2)
With the boundary changes north of the border the total of MPs required for a majority will be 324 seats. If you don’t like the risks of spread betting take the Labour to get 335 seats or less at 2/1 with Bet365 in a market that they do not make available through the betting odds search engines - but link from here.
Even though there’s renewed criticism of the Prime Minister today from within the Labour establishment we think it’s too late now to see any any changes in the position of Tony Blair, Michael Howard or Charles Kennedy in the various party leader markets. We believe that they will all be the leaders of their parties on election day.
We believe that the election will be held on the first Thursday in May 2005 - 05/05/05. The pricing starts to look quite attractive.
WAIT for prices to move out before you BET on John Kerry to be the next US President. The latest round of polls almost all show comfortable leads for the Democrat ticket..
SUMMER SITE UPDATE SCHEDULE Planned updates will be on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays until we go on holiday in the last week in August and the first week in September.
Mike Smithson
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An interesting little table in a House of Commons research paper on the 2001 General Election shows why I believe Labour will do better than a uniform national swing suggests. In seats they gained from the Tories in 1997 (i.e. the marginals), there was virtually no swing away from Labour to the Tories in 2001 (approx 0.1%). This compares with a swing away of 1.5% in seats the Tories held on to in 1997 and 2.1% in seats which had been Labour throughout.
I think this reflects a Labour machine that is astute in its targeting strategy and effective in putting that strategy into operation. Nothing I have heard suggests anything other than that Labour remain light years ahead of the Tories in this respect, and I therefore consider that Labour will do somewhat better than a uniform national swing suggests.
One difference between now and then is that the number of Labour members and councillors has fallen very sharply since 2001. Mike Smithson has already pointed out that this will make it that much harder to get their vote out.
To take some examples:-
In Enfield North (Labour majority 2,200), Labour now hold 4 council seats to 17 for the Conservatives. In Welwyn Hatfield (Labour majority 1,100) Labour held the local council in 2001, now they\’re down to 17 councillors to 31 Conservatives; in Edgbaston (Labour majority 4,600), they hold 2 seats to 10 for the Conservatives.
It is difficult to outfight your opponent on the ground, when your opponent has many more activists than you have.
Also, Labour benefitted from tactical voting in marginal seats last time round. I agree with Mike Smithson that that is likely to diminish at the next general election.
Losing councillors (though it\’s never good) does not necessarily mean you have fewer activists. I\’m a Labour activist in a marginal in the Severn region. Last year, we suffered the humiliation of having our representation halved, being reduced to single figures, and coming in fourth place behind Tories, Ratepayers, and LDs. Our branch, though, has suffered just one resignation over Iraq, and that was by a person who never did anything for the party at election time (she just turned up and irritated people at branch meetings). We have gained two new members since she departed. Our activists are just as \’up for it\’ as they always have been re. election activities, despite disquiet over Iraq.
No doubt there are other CLPs in marginal seats who have lost some of their most active members, those who go canvassing, act as tellers at polling stations, and remind people that they haven\’t voted just before the polls close. This may well, as Mike Smithson suggests, result in a worse result for Labour than suggested by national opinion polls.
All the same, the story of Labour losing activists in marginal seats in the run-up to the next General Election is by no means uniform.
James is right - Labour did brilliantly maintaining its huge majority in 2001 even though its lead over the Tories droppped dropped by more than a quarter from12.5% to 9%. There was much more tactical voting by Lib Dems in Lab-Con marginals and Labour incumbents saw a much better performance than otherseats.
But that was then when the New Labour Government was broadly popular, Tony Blair had huge personalratings and the Tory unpopularity remained.
But the campaigning successes of 2001 will just create much bigger problems in 2004/5 when the public mood has moved sharply away from Labour and Tony Blair. This is for the simple reason that 2001 produced many more tactical votes to unmwind.
For a stark comparison on how Labour have fallen back check the 1996 local election results which took place just a year before the 1997 General Election. http://www.politics.plymouth.ac.uk/politics/lgcecentre/results%201996.htm
These are amazing figures
I think that James is possibly overlooking the effect of the anti-Tory tactical voting organisation (I forget its name), which strongly recommended voting for the incumbent MP when the Tory candidate was in second place. This no doubt helped incumbent Labour MPs to hold on in 2001.
As an example, Britol West was a three-way contest, with a defending Labour MP. No doubt (on the basis of the guidance given) she received the votes of many otherwise Lib Dem suporters. Now that the Lib Dems are in second place, this argument can no longer be used. She seems doomed to lose her seat next time (to the Lib Dem challenger).
By the way, this was one seat where the Labour candidate leapfrogged the Lib Dems to take the seat in 1997 and where the Lib Dems have now strengthened their local government base - like St Albans.
James -
There is a alternate to Labour\’s superior performance in the seats it won in 1997 - the personal vote. In the 2001 general election in seats Labour won in 1997 the Conservative Party would have lost the personal vote the pre-97 MP had (with the exception of defeated MPs like Bob Dunn and Vivian Bendall who re-contested their old seats in 2001) while the post-97 Labour MP would have built up some amount of personal vote in the time since. Personal votes are not a huge factor in British politics, but they can make a difference of a percentage point or two, enough to explain the difference in performance.
But surely the better guide to the next general election is the local elections the year before 2001, rather than 1996?
In 2000 the vote shares were Con 37.2, Lab 32.4, Lib Dem 24.3 (Sorry don\’t know how to post the link to the LGC election site). Comparing this year\’s results with those we see a small swing Con to Lib Dem and a rather larger Lab to Lib Dem swing. I think it was pretty clear that the gloss had come off new Labour in 2000, but they still went on to win the next year.
Now it is also clear that Labour have fallen much further since then (in both polls and local election results), but it is the Lib Dems and others that are benefitting - not the Tories. It\’s my contention that, unless Howard finds a magical formula in the next eight months, then voters will still have severe doubts about the Tories electability - and when given a choice between Howard and Blair - they will (reluctantly) choose Blair. That means a swing back (from where we are now in the polls) to Labour from the Lib Dems - bearing in mind the Tories are probably at their base.
Even only a few points means Labour hit the vital 35% they need to be almost guaranteed victory. The interesting thing will be the swing between the Tories and Lib Dems - at the moment it looks like the Tories will poll a bit more than last time (maybe a point) and the Lib Dems two to three - that means Tories losing to the Lib Dems while gaining from Labour. Of course a couple of points either way makes the dynamics very different.
The other point I\’d make is that the Lib Dems won a grand total of eight seats last time. Even with slightly more favourable circumstances - talk of 40-50 gains (in effect doubling the size of the Parliamentary Party) is surely fanciful. I\’d put 15-20 at the top end of my expectations.
If some the Labour vote goes over to Lib Dems and Others (and on June 10th it was down by 5-6% on 2000)then the Conservatives will benefit, though obviously not by as much as they would the defecting Labour voters went over to them. I think that as a very rough rule of thumb, on a uniform swing, if the Conservative vote is unchanged, and there is a swing from Labour to Lib Dem, the Conservatives pick up three seats from Labour for every one they lose to the Lib Dems.
Also, the turnout (42%) was much higher this year than in May 2000 (32%). Unlike May 2000, the likelihood is that much of the core Labour vote turned out to vote - but didn\’t vote Labour.
So Robert Kilroy-Silk is not standing in Hartlepool? - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3547628.stm
What\’s going to be the impact of this on the upcoming by-election? At the risk of sounding partisan I would say it\’s good news for the Lib Dems - but anything less than a victory could be a blow.
I always though the RK-S Hartlepool suggestion was unconvincing . If he had taken the by-election he would then have had to fight pretty hard to save the seat at the General Election in a few months time. If he\’d lost that then he would have nothing because he would have had to give up being an MEP. At least he\’s now got nearly five years as an MEP to serve.
Sean Fear may well be right - we may see a repeat of the SDP effect in the 1980s, when a split centre-left vote allowed the Tories to win many marginal seats.
Sean is also quite right to note the increased turnout this year compared with 2000 - it was back, in fact, to the levels of turnout seen in local elections (around 40%) seen in local elections before turnout fell in the late 90s (turnout rose even in non-postal ballot areas).
It would appear that, since the LDs almost came second in the Ipswich by-election of November 2001, disillusioned Labour voters are not just sitting on their hands, but are supporting the LDs (or other parties, such as Respect).
Some core Labour voters may just fall back into line at the General Election, for fear of letting the Tories in. On the other hand, many will not, when they (however mistakenly) see the Tories as a spent force. Secondly, many Muslim voters (particularly those who\’ve already voted Liberal Democrat or Respect in the last three parliamentary by-elections) will never forgive Labour for the Iraq War (just as many previous Liberal voters never forgave the Liberal Party for installing the first Labour government in the confidence vote which Stanley Baldwin cunningly called after the 1924 General Election).
Richard, I think you need to check the hyperlink attached to your name. Not sure how the Labour party would
cope with that one.
Thanks for that, Jon, I hadn\’t noticed - the party would, indeed, be rather taken aback…
The problem is sorted out now, thanks to Spybot. Apologies for (inadvertently) having brought such a salacious hyperlink to what\’s supposed to be a reasonably high-minded discussion of psephology!
Back to the next election - Mike Smithson mentions the upsets of 1970, February 1974, and 1992. In all those cases, the governments of the day either lost, or won unexpectedly. Since Mike is still tipping Labour to emerge as the largest party, would not a better comparison be October 1974, when Labour was expected to win with a majority of at least 20, but finished with a much smaller majority of 3?
The problem is sorted out now, thanks to Spybot. Apologies for (inadvertently) having brought such a salacious hyperlink to what\’s supposed to be a reasonably high-minded discussion of psephology!
Back to the next election - Mike Smithson mentions the upsets of 1970, February 1974, and 1992. In all those cases, the governments of the day either lost, or won unexpectedly. Since Mike is still tipping Labour to emerge as the largest party, would not a better comparison be October 1974, when Labour was expected to win with a majority of at least 20, but finished with a much smaller majority of 3?
Richard - the problem is not sorted - in fact it is worse
Richard - Is your page sponsored by the Labour Party or what? \”The party would … be taken aback\” etc. I am cynical, of course, but recognise that the Labour Party is capable of everything…………..
But what are the implications in terms of betting odds etc?
See comment 10 for the implications in terms of betting odds. My comment that the Labour Party would be taken aback was a jocular reply to Jon\’s warning (11) re. the hyperlink.
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