Guest slot: RodCrosby’s by-election trend analysis
June 30th, 2006
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History shows the challenge facing the Tories
RodCrosby has done an analysis of by-elections swings, and the Swing-Back to governments’since the War.
Using the Butler swing between Labour and Conservative, the Swing-Back is defined as the difference between the average swing to the Opposition in by-elections and the swing to the Opposition at the subsequent General Election.
So, for example the average Butler swing from Labour to the Tories in by-elections 2001-2005 was 7.9%. The swing the Tories obtained in the General Election was 3.1%. Thus the Swing-Back to Labour in 2005 was 4.8%. For John Major’s last term the equivalent figures were 13.6% and 10.2% - a Swing-Back of 3.4% to the Tories.
The remarkable feature of this graph is that the Swing-Back to government has been highly consistent since at least 1974, irrespective of party in power, government term, parliament length, number of by-elections, turnout, and the relative strength of the Liberals in either by-elections or General Elections.
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It has ranged between 3% and 5% with a very stable average of almost exactly 4%. It thus has all the appearance of an “Iron Law.”
So, if we subtract 4% from the average by-election swing to the Tories by the end of this parliament, we might have an excellent prediction of the General Election swing to within plus or minus 1%.
In other words, it would seem that for the Tories to be on course for an overall majority - requiring a swing of about 7% at the next General Election - their by-election average swing would need to be of the order of 10%-12%, to allow for the historical expected 4% Swing-Back to Labour.
After Bromley (to be fair to the Tories we should ignore Blaenau), the average by-election swing currently stands at 3.9% - low by any standards.
The Swing-back rule implies that if Tony Blair went to the country tomorrow, we would expect - so far as the Labour and Tories are concerned - a near-exact re-run of 2005, within the range of a 1% swing either way. Depending on the boundaries and the operation of the electoral system, Labour would seem quite confident of a 4th term with the Tories not even competitive.
We are now into the second year of this parliament, and of course things may yet improve for the Tories.
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But, assuming this parliament runs to a full term, the Tories really need to be recording swings sometime, someplace in the range of 15-20%+ to bring their average up to a level where they seriously threaten Labour for power.
Failing which, despite all the understandable hype and interest in the current Tory leader, historical precedent unswervingly suggests that he will barely dent the Labour majority in 2009…..
RodCrosby is a regular contributor to PB.C discussions
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Thank you very much Rod, now I see what you mean.
This is very interesting stuff- some comfort for Labour after the thumpings of yesterday, and still further problems for Francis Maude after a pretty grim day yesterday.
Of course, ‘iron laws’ are meant to be broken
I would not say yesterday was grim for us, it was worse than that.
But for this parliment we have 1 data point from 1 BE - this only becomes interesting after 3 or 4 BEs.
5. FOUR, ignoring Blaenau
Fascinating!
Can I suggest though that the number of by-elections is still far too small to be a helpful indicator, much as your graph looks like a straight line?
If there was a by-election in a Labour held-seat with a small majority over the Tories at the last election, surely the Tories would make their first gain in ages, and on a big swing to boot.
The Lib Dems wouldn’t emerge as the challenger would they? Or perhaps Labour would go down to third.
There would then be a much bigger average swing to the Tories, pushing up the average significantly. Two or three like that and suddenly the Tories would look on course for a landslide.
And straight as your straight line looks, it is a trend line, so it obscures far more variation than is apparent. Can’t we put it down to coincidence that it’s quite that straight?
7. fascinating stuff !
Is there an average amount of byelections in a parliament and at what stage does it start to get harder for an oppostion to reverse the trend ?
The one thing that’s for certain is that the Tory party will not let local associations manage a by-election campaign ever again. It is just too important to be left in their hands and Cameron has all the evidence it wants.
There’s some slight consolation for the leadership in that the proposition of “Cameron’s Conservatives” was simply not put to the voters in the election. If the leader is not named, it can be argued, how can you blame the leader?
What the Lib Dems are brilliant at doing is pulling off amazing performances when there is a £100k expense limit and hundreds of volunteers. They have to find a way of doing equally well when those advantages are not present.
The South Staff election postponed from May 5th last year saw the party having to work within General Election expense limits and they just put on a couple of percent.
I have just watched Bob Niell’s speech. An excellent speech, even Farage seems to be muttering agreement at his comments about the Lib Dem campaign.
Ben Abbott - comes across very poorly. That does his party no favours at all.
“The one thing that’s for certain is that the Tory party will not let local associations manage a by-election campaign ever again. It is just too important to be left in their hands and Cameron has all the evidence it wants.”
Staff from CCHQ were heavily involved in the campaign from the outset. Five offices were run during the campaign, something which no association could manage on its own. It is however possible that, effectively, nobody was in overall charge.
7. We’ve had four so far, there were only 6 between 2001-2005, and only ONE between Feb-Oct 1974. However the pattern seems unbroken.
There is also a tendency(not shown in the graph) for swing to be SMALLER in marginal seats. I’m sure the Tories would love to fight a by-election in a Labour marginal, but who remebers Birmingham Northfield, 1982. Tory majority of 200 turned into a Labour majority of 200….6 months later>>>>Tory landslide…
8. There is a tendency for the swing to peak in about the third year, then start “swinging-back.” John Major was the exception. Universally awful from start to finish, but he still got a swing-back of 3.4%…..
Re 11, Sean, from waht I have been hearing the organisation was not good. See the article on Iain dales blog.
I’m afraid that I regard your analysis, Rod, as one of post hoc propter hoc.
Of the by-elections fought between 2001 and 2004, all but one (Ipswich) was held in a very safe Labour seat. As such, they were a completely unrepresentative sample of the whole. In four of them, the Labour vote share dropped very sharply in the face of the Liberal Democrat campaigns, while the Conservative vote dropped less sharply.
But I can see no reason to predict the likely swing at a future election, on the basis of a swing between Conservative and Labour in seats in which the Conservatives have come third. In fact swing is generally calculated as between the top two candidates.
I can see no reason at all why the performance of the Conservative and Labour parties in Bromley (or in a safe Labour seat) should tell us anything about their likely future performance in a seat like Battersea.
I might have made a mistake in calculation (not being too number-friendly), but wasn’t the average Butler swing between Labour and Tory in the first four byes of 1997 (Uxbridge, Beckenham, Paisley South and Winchester) an 8.75% swing to Labour? If so, then it would be difficult to extrapolate a trend as yet. I don’t know whether a Lab-Tory “Steed swing” calculation would help for this exericse.
14. You might as well apply your reservations to the 1970-74 parliament or the 1979-83 parliament… that pesky pattern is still there though, isn’t it. You will see that I stated
“The remarkable feature of this graph is that the Swing-Back to government has been highly consistent since at least 1974, irrespective of party in power, government term, parliament length, number of by-elections, turnout, and the ***relative strength of the Liberals in either by-elections or General Elections.****”
As for “unrepresentative”, you do remember how many seats Labour won in 2001? and how many the Tories won? I think the Grim Reaper chose a represenative sample…..
15. I have it as 1.5% to the Tories (and strictly-speaking Winchester wasn’t a by-election, but a re-run, but I have included it in the dataset.) Please check your figures or post them,(just the pluses and minues) and I’ll check them.
15. Average swing to Con in the first four by-elections in 1997 was 1.5 per cent: 5.1% and 5.8% to Con in Uxbridge and Paisley, 2.6% and 2.4% to Lab in Beckenham and Winchester.
Good analysis, Rod, and I’m a little peeved at not having thought of it myself! Do you mind sending me any documents at lewisbaston [AT] hotmail.com. I could mention and credit it in the next Baston & Henig book as I tend to write the chapters on by-elections.
10. James M, OTT speech. Look at Catherine Sthiler’s speech in Dunfermline to see a good concession speech…ops, Neill actually won! Mark Hunter in Cheadle was better too in denouncing “dirty tricks” without sounding hysteric.
Abbott OTT too.
9 I don’t think we put in the teams of people to S. Staffs so it is not fair to give that as a comparision between a GE expensed campaign and a by election expensed campaign as it wasn’t just the money that was missing. I think we could fight a very effective campaign on limited expenses, but I agree it would be a real handicap. In addition to the money, key I think is the very professional and committed by election core team and the numbers of lunatic foot soldiers.
I think our target seats do run the most effective campaigns of all the parties. Not because we are any better than the other parties, but because we lack the financial resources of the other parties who haven’t had to adapt to these lack of resources. What it does mean is that the other parties make the most of their financial advantage i.e. we are all playing to our strengths.
I think we can all list the things the LDs, Tories, Lab do best in campaigns.
What it does mean is that the LD advantages lend themselves to by election situations and then on top of it all we have the funds as well - whoopie.
As a by election does not have the noise of a national campaign drowning out the local effort.
How do we do this when the financial limit is at GE levels and the foot soldiers are scattered - No idea.
Yes, this sort of thing is why I’m counselling Labour people not go round crying “Doom!” It seems like forever since the last GE, but actually we’re potentially less than a quarter way through the Parliament. Plenty of time for all kinds of twists and turns…
Meanwhile, heard Cameron lavishing faint praise on the victor: “I’m sure he will do the best he can as an MP.” Um, yes, thanks Dave. He went on to say, “The result shows that we have to push our reform agenda in the party forward faster than ever.” He really has been studying TB down to the very phrasing.
One theory about the result is that it reflected the loss of a big Eric Forth personal vote. I’ve always heard that Eric absolutely loathed constituency politics - he was of the ‘I represent you in Parliament, your drains and potholes are nothing to do with me’ school of thought, now quite rare among MPs. Does anyone know if he nevertheless had a big personal following from people who would otherwise have voted LibDem?
20 ‘As’ in last para should have read ‘Also’.
21 Someone posted here that he never held a surgery.
Personal votes are I believe often over estimated (except in exceptional circumstances)
21. Nick, he could have had a considerable personal vote, but fialing to keep it could be considered a campaign failure too.
I suppose Margaret Ewing had some personal vote in Moray too, but SNP seemed to have managed to have kept it during the Scottish Parliament by-election.
23. kih, probably right. I would generally put them in 3-4% range….they can make the difference in tight races and a well respected incumbent could help to keep wavering voters (but those voters they were already considering his/her party)
re 20. Where the Lib Dem reign supreme is in their literature. Neither Labour nor the Tories can touch them in building an awareness and a compelling case for support. This has been honed over the years and is hugely impressive.
I find it very reassuring that for all their money spent in Gwent yesterday that Labour lost both seats. It’s not just about the resources but how you use what you’ve got.
The Tories are simply miles behind in knowing what to say and how to say it in a by-election context.
But once Cameron finds a Tory Fraser Kemp (Hartlepool) or Tom Watson (Hodge Hill) then there will be an interesting battle. These two ran nasty personal campaigns aimed at the Lib Dem by-election candidates and retained the seats for Labour. Find a chink in your opponent and go after it mercilessly.
The Tories have yet to learn that lesson but they will.
Andrea - I do not think Bob Niell’s speech was particularly over the top or hysterical.
I think Forth may have had a decent personal vote. Although I guess personal votes can be hard to quantify and over-estimated. Surgeries or no surgeries - he certainly was doing something right.
Whats the Shaun Woodward story ?
10/19 Jamea/Andrea. I’m with Andrea on this one.
I’m sure many Tories enjoyed Bob a Jobs’ double barreled attack on Ben Abbott and would have given a few quid to do so themselves.
But if you try and look at it from the average punters view, what they saw was a Tory from central casting veering on a Connery and castigating the voters for having the temerity to cast their ballot for the “nasty” Lib Dems. The voters don’t like to be told they’ve dropped a bollock, hours after doing so.
Mind you the smuggness of Abbott’s speech was nearly enough to induce a sick bag too !!
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Good thread Rod. Many thanks.
Jack W - I have not had the pleasures of watching Abott.
You might be correct regarding the opinion the average viewer will have, but I am a paid up member of the Conservatives and I felt it had to be said about the Lib Dem campaign in this seat.
Finally I think most viewers will think that the smug, arm raising of Abott - is pretty arrogant and childish in itself.
27. James/Jack. At one point I thought he was going to morph into Bob Marshall Andrews during the election night.
Anyway I suppose everyone has already forgot his speech!
26. Mike, I think the Indies run an effective campaign too. From what I’ve understood, in the Westminster campaign they found a nickname for Owen Smith (”Oily Smith”) and painted him as a Blairite New Lab clone.
21. Nick, my parents live in Bromley and although they would never vote Conservative they did say that Forth (or at least his office) was very helpful and attentive when they contacted him on a couple of constituency issues, one of which was the axing of a local bus route.
Firstly, what are the similar figures for lib dem/con and lib dem/lab (or liberal, as earlier)? This is a narrow set of figures which are only one part of a much more complex picture. They should also be showing simliar trend no?
Also a shame that all available polls are out of kilter with this, if there was an election tomorrow it would *not* be the same result as in 2005, after BG and B&C this is even more clear.
Sean Fear has it right I think, and I bow to his knowledge and experience in this area.
I was going to add my reflection on the byes into this post but I’ll do it separately later, so as not to mix things up too much. The most important thing for me is campaigning, turnout and the behaviour of politicians and how they treat the electorate. Politicos of all parties should beware, it isn’t pretty.
33 - Should read “They should also be showing a similar trend, no?”
So many threads today , not sure which one to post on . Thanks firsgt to Rod for an interesting article , the conclusions of which I mostly agree with , although I do not think it can be transcribed into a truth set in stone .
There has been comment on where the votes in 2005 went to or stayed at home in the B/C byelection . It may be more instructive to compare the votes with the local elections last month as the turnout is much more similar . Although I only have exact figures for the new boundaries , the figures would have been something like CON 13,500 LAB 3,500 LDEM 5,500 GRE 1300 BNP 1300 OTHERS 1200
On these figures it is likely there was a little churning from Con to Ldem .
From the Emails sent out from Lord R. to Lib Dem members I got the impression that a good 2nd place was expected but that he did not expect to be in with a shout of beating the Conservatives at the close of poll . Don’t know if others had that feeling .
30/31 James/Andrea. Both Bob and Ben (the flowerpot men !) deserve a fat raspberry …. they should have had someone else help them pull their strings last night.
Reminded me of the Mellor Putney 97 moment “and up yer hacienda Jimmy.”
“I think most viewers will think that the smug, arm raising of Abott - is pretty arrogant and childish in itself”
“I do not think Bob Niell’s speech was particularly over the top or hysterical”
Typical Tory double standards. Great to see you vile Tories so wound up. I look forward to the vicious repercussions in your lovely party.
15, 18 - Yes: basic errors in my spreadsheet were to blame. *^-^*
37 ColinW. Ah … and there was me talking of sick bags and up pops Colin.
36. Jack, yes, I tend to agree. Late hours made me too excitable!
39 - Well, Colin is a protein scientist, so has to be nuts. Bet he’s into walnut whips big time
35. The new boundaries are worse for the Conservatives. My notional 2005 B&C result is Con 49% Lab 22% LD 23%. If the by-election had been held on the new boundaries…
Interesting theory, Rod. It suggests that the real test for the Conservatives would be a by-election in a Labour seat with a 20%+ majority, and the Lib Dems in a poor third place.
42. “It suggests that the real test for the Conservatives would be a by-election in a Labour seat with a 20%+ majority, and the Lib Dems in a poor third place. ”
something like this, Kevin?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/html/58.stm
41 John O. Or nutty slack !
Very good analysis, Rod. I think one or two people here owe you an apology, frankly.
37. I love it colin, its actually made we want to start campaiging more in my local area just to keep the lib dems out of contention. Ps I am finding myself in the strange position of Supporting Germany on penalties…..cant stand Argentina since Simeone v Beckham in 1998. Come on the Germans
47 Jimbo. England supporters should support the Argies as they have far more yellow cards in play for the semi-final and thus available for missing the final !!
43. I was thinking of Walsall or Workington, but of course we can’t pick and choose our by-elections.
36. Jack, I showed my mother the video of the declaration…she said if she had been Bob Neill, she would have slapped Abbotts in the face
49 Andrea. Yet again your mother shows impeccable taste !!
47. regardless of yellows I just cant stand the argies….highlighted by their reaction at the end of the match. still i’m smiling. apologies for bringing footy into this thread, couldnt help myself.
I ought to have added that I found your article very interesting Rod, despite not agreeing with your conclusions.
50. Jack, don’t mock her!
Murray played well today….but Hingis just lost to Sugyiama
RodC Good article and verey thought provoking, but I suspect that what you have picked up is not a trend between by elections and GEs but the nanny syndrome. Voters and customers both tend to stick to nanny for fear of something worse. The fear of the new, social and political inertia, call it what you will. It is always very difficult for the challenger to break through in the court of public self interest, however disinterested and public spirited that self interest is.
Would not the graph appear a little more useful if the ‘base’ for each election year’s figure was shown deviated by eventual GE swing? Obviously a big swing back is not so important when there is an even bigger swing occurring.
But interesting in an anorakky way. Problem with drawing a trend line is that the diference betwen 3 and 5 per cent is a potential election winner by quite a bit.
26 Mike: Couldn’t agree more re LDs and literature and lots of it. Whenever people complain of too much, it is time to do another! Tories good at consolidating the vote. Again it is focusing on what you need to do to win. Historically LDs need to turn voters to win whereas Tories need only to get their vote out to win.
Dopn’t mean to miss out labour, but my background is Tory/LD contests.
just another straw in the wind. In you go to Martin Baxter’s site, you will find that the current opinion poll prediction indicates a current Butler swing to the Tories of about 4.4%, pretty much in line with the average by-election swing of 3.9%…
49. “. .if she had been Bob Neill, she would have slapped Abbotts in the face. ”
Andrea if Bob Neill were your mother, the election material would doubtless have been much more interesting indeed!
On the TV this morning the BBC had a totally useless woman lobbing up dollies which even Hazel Blears could smash over the net without the aid of a stepladder. HB said the standard line about poor Bromley performance (collapse from 2nd place) that the people got behind who they thought might be the winner, without being tasked on ‘why the hell wasn’t that winner Labour then’ or the more crushing ’so explain then if this was the position of Labour voters, why not UKIP voters’?
55. I was trying to show that the swing-back is independent of either the absolute average by-election swing one way, or the actual GE swing obtained the other way. I think I achieved that, don’t you think?
And the difference between 3 and 5 percent swing back could indeed be an election changer. But in the current political landscape? I think not.
As promised up thread………
Two losers last night -
1) the electorate.
2) politics.
I can’t recall ever being as despairing of a set of elections as these, all of this being finally wrapped up in the package of bile and contempt that were the speeches of Neill, Abbotts and one of the BG labour candidates (I don’t recall which but he got a bad reception and looked like a Miliband clone).
I had hoped, after a hard days slog at the chalkface, to find a little contrition as to the nature of this but, a few people excepted (I recall tpfkar as one, and yes I have read all the threads… phew!) it is mostly, ‘Wasn’t Neill’s speech appalling’ or ‘Wasn’t Abbotts’ behaviour appalling’ etc. No admission that both were exactly the same and should be treated as such (BG remaining the Bermuda triangle of bye elections, getting much less coverage).
I watched Neill and was angered by his gracelessness and inability to rise above the provocation, I watched Abbots and, if I was a violent man I would have, quite honestly, clambered onto the stage and thumped his smug, childish, sneering visage, he was that much of a disgrace. I despaired at the inability of the labour candidate to see what lessons needed to be learned at the expense of his spinning etc. etc.
Does anyone really think that this is how to win over voters, especially those who have ceased voting? That this is merely incidental to the fall in turnout and the contempt with which politicians of all stripes are held? Please, please think again as this is the *cause* and someone, somewhere, should say enough is enough. (B&C showed a bigger fall in turnout than BG and it’s a pretty good reflection of much more bitter that campaign was and how the sniping turned off voters)
With the football all around us and, prompted by Nick P and Valerie who alluded to the game in recent posts, I see the same malaise of both as linked. Rather than diving, simulation and so on we have politicians (and posters of all types here following their lead) doing the political equivalent. The spinning, the obfuscation and the outright contempt for the contest/game in exhibiting a ‘win at all costs’ attitude. The yobbish behaviour of those such as Abbotts and Neill reminded me of the faces of those English and Germans, in a stand off in Stuttgart; the same facial expressions and the same irrational hatred of ‘the other’.
So where do we go from here? Is it possible to go any lower? Well some apparently think that all that parties need to do is to consistently use the Abbotts’ (and Cheadle/Hartlepool) style as it works, but that way even lower turnout lies and it shows sheer contempt for voters. Negate your opponents with personal attacks and hold your own vote steady, that is shameful electioneering.
I know that activists and so on from all parties don’t like me saying this (or me because I say it) but, quite frankly, I don’t care. If or when I start saying that ‘they’re all the same’ and cease voting I will have lost and this attitude will have won. I hope that day is still in the distant future.
If a few stop and consider, just for this moment, the effect on voters and on politics as a whole of this that’s good enough for me. At least (according to a previous thread on pb.com) this is in the top 100,000 sites for traffic and it’s better than talking about it in the pub and saying ‘what can you do, eh?’
Loads of work gone in to this analysis Rod, but it ends up a bit like “20% of fatal accidents are caused by drunk drivers, therefore 80% of fatal accidents are caused by sober drivers ergo I’m safer driving when I’m drunk”.
60. “one of the BG labour candidates (I don’t recall which but he got a bad reception and looked like a Miliband clone).”
probably Owen Smith, the Westminster candidate.
While Rod makes a strong case for the Tories not gaining a majority on current bye trends, the case for Labour not losing their majority is much weaker. The swing needed for Labour to lose their majority is likely to be so small as to achieved by any but a grossly underperforming Opposition. The battle would then be over who would be the largest party in a hung Parliament.
61. I’m glad that at least you agree that 100% of road accidents are caused by drivers. I wasn’t sure for a minute…..
Wow - good to see a poster - ColinW - still manages to lower the debate and describe Tory’s as “vile”. That raised the bar a few octaves.
Certainly was not double standards. As far as I see Bob Niell was simply saying that the Lib Dems played dirty. I think he had the right to say that and I do not think he came across hysterical in doing so. That is my opinion.
I do not know how the campaign went so I cannot of course suggest it was correct - but I never claimed that Bob Niell was right. However from hearing many other posters views - it seems that the Lib Dems campaign was divisive.
Equally I think Abott looked ridiculous in his responses.
65 - I personally think he was ill-advised unless the LDs were plausibly implicated in acts which would be illegal under electoral law, or behaved extremely unethically. The campaign didn’t appear, to me, to reach that level of dirtiness.
9 - must disagree with mike here, how can this by election not have been “cameron’s conservatives”. I would say awareness of cameron, especially amongst those who bothered to vote is very high.
This was a by election with the tories clearly led by cameron. Would you have said a labour performance in a by election in 1995 six months after blair became labour leader would not have been “blair’s labour?”.
Furthermore, if the local campaign was badly organised, it was badly organised with cameron as the party leader, on his watch. If cameron cannot reorganise his party then may tell us something about his future prospects.
It is clear that cameron has managed to get the tories through the 33% glass ceiling, and they have the potential to win, but it is only potential, and there are many reason why that potential won’t be fulfilled. Bromley was a very poor result for cameron, anything else is just spin!
MS and Iain Dale think the tories will ‘learn lessons’ in how to fight bye-elections. Where’s the evidence for that?
The LDs are streets ahead of the others in how effectively they fight bye-elections. And have been some years. There is little indication of the two main parties showing any interest in copying their approach.
Ukp “With the football all around us and, prompted by Nick P and Valerie who alluded to the game in recent posts, I see the same malaise of both as linked.”
it’s even worse than that, it’s the commentators as well. We of course all hate the Argies (Magie T, hand of God etc) so when the Argentine goes down in the penalty area just before full-time he gets yellow carded for ‘diving’. Apparently ‘Argies’ do this a lot. The comentators go OTT (red card offence) in saying how despicable this is, ‘typical Argie’ and then the slow motion replay shows clearly that the German tackles his legs after ball is two foot ahed of them both. Commentators say ‘well he was asking for it’ or some such nonsense.
The after the match (and a punch up who no one knows how it was started but the Argies are immediately blamed) The commentators start to say one after another that actually the Argies playedthe better football. No one mentions either that a couple of Newtons less on Coddicini’s incredible punt onto the top of the crossbar and it would have been the shot of the tournament.
Plenty of analogies with state of British politics today. I would point out that you can onlty really win loads of voteswith a ‘negative campaign’ in England when there is nothing ‘positive’ being put out by the person who is at the ‘thin end’ of the negativity.
“MS and Iain Dale think the tories will ‘learn lessons’ in how to fight bye-elections. Where’s the evidence for that?”
Labour in Hodge Hill and Hartlepool. Mike’s point is that sooner or later the Conservatives will learn to fight the Lib Dems in a similar manner.
Argentina’s gamesmanship cost them. I’m sorry to say it as they were a bigger profit for me than Germany but they only have themselves to blame (timewasting, simulation etc).
The British hate Germany *and* Argentina too so there was no particular partiality, just general contempt.
Regarding nagetive teams only winning against weak teams I don’t think so! Many times has a better team been dumped out by the odd con trick, usually from sides which needn’t resort to it which is even more fruatrating.
They did - in Cheadle. They lost.
Re 69, I have turned the commentators off. On the BBC, as with Sky, you can have the match sound, crowd etc, without their incredible biased and excitable gibberish.
How much Labour is rumoured to have spent in Blaenau Gwent?
Dai Davies claims to have spent £6,000 of his own money on the campaign + £800 in personal donations.
70 - This was the point of my (rather lengthy but heartfelt) post. Any party going down that route is just making things worse in the eyes of the electorate. My hope is that positivity wins in the end, a romantic view I know but I can’t countenance the result from going down the ever more negative route.
(BTW the BBC seem to be on Argentina’s side, Hansen particularly so)
74 - Practically all of the spending limit of £100,000 for each bye.
SNP just put out a press release saying the result in Blaenau Gwent shows that it’s a 2 horse race in Scotland…..
http://www.snp.org/snpnews/2005/snp_press_release.2006-06-30.0036550395
Ah, btw, is it me or Dinky is just spinning very fast in his website bio:
http://www.alanduncan.org.uk/PDF/PersonalProfile.pdf
76. Thanks Observer. So a big difference with the expenses of the Davies.
71 - Apologies for typos, it’s my crap eyesight.
72 - they did it badly in Cheadle. The question is whether they can learn to do it well!
55.
for completeness, here are the raw stats you request
…..BE swing…swingback…GE swing
2005 7.9………4.8……….3.2
2001 5.3………3.5……….1.8
1997 13.6……..3.4………10.2
1992 5.2……..3.1……….2.1
1987 7.2……..5.2……….1.8
1983 0.6……..4.7……….4.1 (to the government)
1979 9.6……..4.3……….5.3
1974O 1.2……..3.3……….2.1 (to the government)
1974F 4.1……..3.4……….0.7
1970 12.0……..7.2……….4.8
1966 1.6……..4.3……….2.7 (to the government)
1964 6.0……..3.0……….3.0
1959 5.0……..6.1……….1.1 (to the government)
1955 0.4……..2.2……….1.7 (to the government)
1951 4.4……..3.3……….1.1
1950 3.0……..0.1……….2.9
for simplicity, I have not included the plus/minus standard to distinguish the Butler swing to Labour or Con. The by-election(BE) swings are all in the direction of the Opposition(whoever they were) and the GE swings were also in the direction of the Opposition, except where noted as being to the government. (there also may be slight rounding to 1dp) Essentially the swingback figures were extracted by subtracting the GE swing from the BE swing, except where there was a GE swing to the government in which case they were added…
FWIW, without doing detailed analysis, I believe the swingback between 1945-50 is quite an underestimate of the true position. Matters were complicated by uncontested by-elections, double-member by-elections, two Labour-contested ILP by-elections that produced apparent massive swings to Labour. My guess is that it was really well in excess of 1%, but I did not want to be accused of fiddling the figures, so I’ve left it alone. Anyway, it was 60 years ago and the pattern since seems pretty well established.
53 Andrea. Apologies if that post indicated ridicule … it was meant to represent exactly the opposite.
Indeed I rather think your Mama would get on famously with the spectactularly redoubtable Dowager Lady Jack W …. there is no higher honour !!!!!!!!!
72 - if the Cheadle result had been repeated last night, the Conservatives would have had a lead of 5000 in Bromley.
Re 60, UKPaul I agree with your sentiment. The problem is the punters buy it.
Was it right for bob Neil to comment? Well by implication all his other opponents played fair so was it not right to complimet them? And Nigel Farage agreed too..
I wonder what UKIP are going to do next?
82. Jack, I always pardon you, so don’t worry!
83 - and what if the Lib Dems had put the total level of effort into Bromley that they put into Cheadle?
I’m still a little unclear as to what part of the Lib Dems campaign was dirty . Was it false to say that Neil lived in Tower Hamlets and not Bromley and was it false to describe him as 3 job Bob .
The question that has to be answered is ‘why do people buy it?’. I don’t want to believe that people in general thrive on the negative because it’s a horrible world we have if it’s true.
I see this tactic as a means of channelling fear of ‘the other’, the BNP’s ‘other’ is clear and blatant, other parties may be more coded but it’s the same impulse and the same tactic. In all instances it is shameful.
Bob Neill sent threatening letters to other campaigns (notably UKIP) for minor breaches of the law. His own problems were reported in the press.
Bob Neill, from all accounts has dined out on making trouble for other people for years. His Standards Board references for fellow Met Police Authority member Peter Herbert (for whom I have very little time I must say) were a total disgrace.
55. just as a matter of interest, I’ve backtested the model in the light of your point. Although it is not quite the same answer to the qustion you asked, I have found the following to be the case…
At each election beginning with 1955 I have “predicted” the election based on the swingback trend up to the previous election. 1959 is the only election that would have predicted a different majority winner to the actual result - a hypothetical Labour majority of about 30 versus a real Tory majority of 100.
In the razors-edge Feb 1974 election, the Tory and Labour seats numbers would have been just about reversed, with Ted Heath ahead by 6 seats, rather than Wilson by 5, but neither close to a majority.
Interestingly that is the ONLY case where the Opposition **actually did better** than the model predicted by enough to influence the result in an way, and then only by a tiny fractional amount.
Pretty good model, eh?
Good article Rod.
This went on the wrong thread - whoops…..
Just manipulating some figures and, you know what, it can be fun!
Swingback from by elections to general elections but this time between tories and lib dems. I only went back to 1979 but it’s enough I think. Tried to ignore anomalies such as the lib dem who defected to labour on the eve of the by election and the post-Betty Boothroyd election.
1979-1983
Avge 15.66% swing Con to LD
Actual in 1983 6.3%
Swingback – 9.4%
1983-1987
Avge 13.13% swing Con to LD
Actual in 1987 1.3%
Swingback – 11.8%
1987-1992
Avge 5.05% swing Con to LD
Actual in 1992 -2.1% (to con)
Swingback – 7.0%
1992-1997
Avge 13.03% swing Con to LD
Actual in 1997 5.1%
Swingback – 7.9%
1997-2001
Avge 4.41% swing Con to LD
Actual in 2001 0.2%
Swingback - 4.2% (easily the lowest figure, possibly down to the very low starting point for the tories)
2001-2005
Avge 9.98% swing Con to LD
Actual in 2005 1.4%
Swingback 8.6%
Figures haven’t been cleaned up but you get the gist.
Feel free to check them someone.
So what do we have so far since 2005?
Avge 4.83% swing Con to LD
Suggesting that while there is a chance there will be no swing to the tories the likelihood is that it will be a 3 to 4% swing and a possibility of a 7% swing.
I hope that lib dems realise the folly of taking this method as gospel. Although figures may not lie to you they can be selected so as to be economical with that truth.
I might look at the lib dem/lab figures at some point.
Thanks Rod - I’m not sure I understand the maths entirely, but your point is clear - oppositions that become government do well in byelections (including their own defences).
Now where I agree with Sean Fear is that it is too early to say how the rest of this Parliament will pan out - it is entirely possible that Cameron’s ‘New Conservatives’ gain momentum and start winning by-elections big. Equally possible is that Cameron could be the false dawn of Hague/IDS/Howard.
There is little evidence from polls or local government elections or by-electiosn that the Tories are heading for a majority. That says more about them than it does about Labour who are in dire (if not terminal) states.
Interesting UKpaul - but you should do the figures for 74-79 which was the last time the Tories gained office.
95 - Any idea where I can get the by election results and percentage plus/minuses from that period?
I wonder what a similar exercise for opinion poll averages and actual result ’swing back’ would produce?
96. ukpaul, try here:
http://www.geocities.com/by_elections/constituencies.html
Thanks Andrea, it looks as though there are no percentages, and it’ll take ages to sort them out and find the corresponding 1974 results, so I might give it a miss.
I thought that 1979 was a good starting point because I see that as a new era, with the SDP, Alliance, SLD and so on. The voters became quite different in makeup.
I’ll try and do the lib dem/lab post 1979 though if no one else gets around to it.
99- “it looks as though there are no percentages, and it’ll take ages to sort them out and find the corresponding 1974 results, so I might give it a miss.”
ukpaul, I know where you can find the % results for 1974 GE, but sadly I don’t know where you can find online the byelections results in terms of %
87-Mark Senior
Maybe you need look no further than the ridiculuos picture of Abbotts ‘removing the graffiti by hand’ to give you a flavour of the mentality of the campaign,not to mention the gap year at the indian orphange which changed to a week and then just a visit.
The local literature plus local press releases by the Lib Dems were just negative personalised attacks on Neil.
Finally Abbotts swaggering ,aggressive ever nodding appearance on stage had all the grace of a losing BNP candidate.
93. ahem!, the reason I chose to analyse the position between Lab and Con using Butler swing, is the same reason all serious psephologists do, which is basically twofold:
i) it has been established since time immemorial that the variation in swing between Labour and Conservative is systematic… i.e. it is correlated both to socio-economic factors and to the performance of the other party (i.e. Labour up = Con down, relatively), while the variation in performance of the Lib Dems is not correlated to either of these. This in part explains the reason why the Lib Dems could win in BOTH Romsey(and potentially Bromley) and Dunfermline, but it would be unlikeley that whatever the situation either Labour would win Romsey OR the Tories Dunfermline….
ii) Although three-party politics may be coming closer in terms of votes, the current electoral system invariably means that there are only ever two parties (qv Duverger’s Law) which are a)in serious contention for government; and b)between which the majority of seats change hands. Those two parties are STILL Labour and Conservative, and so the swing between THEM is still the only meaningful and useful measure of change when predicting or analysing a national election.
This is really all ABC stuff… I recommend that you either purchase, or obtain from your library any one of the series of excellent books entitled “The British General Election of….” by David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh. They go back to 1945. Study the Appendix hard, and you will reach enlightenment, Grasshopper….
Or, if all that went over your head… There is a nugget of truth in the statement “Lib Dem by-election victories are just a Flash-in-the Pan…”
‘Finally Abbotts swaggering ,aggressive ever nodding appearance on stage had all the grace of a losing BNP candidate.’
Or a winning Tory one?
77. How do the SNP work that out, since Labour’s only by-election win this parliament has been where the SNP were the challengers?
Interesting and thanks for the work done, but I think the arrival of genuine 3 party politics may make the theory, interesting but irrelevant.
Birmingham Northfield would seem, to be beyond even his Lordship - though I will send a donation to Cowley St as penance for thinking that of Bromey - but I dont believe that there are many constituencies in such a position.
We have Lib - Dem vs Conservative and Lib Dem vs Labour battleground consituencies but I would expect (without doing the hard work) not many clear Labour vs Conservatives situations (Lib dems being in third by less than say 5%, as at Bromley make it a three way fight)
ukpaul @ 60 wrote that he would have “clambered onto the stage and thumped his smug, childish, sneering visage”.
Sadly I haven’t seen ukpaul’s mug but I feel much the same about him every time he posts one of his self-righteous, self-important posts on here.
Give me Neill or Abbott any day over a smug git like ukpaul
Rod, you might as well stop digging!
1) Th results are as stable and as useful as yours.
2) The concept of swingback caters for the way that lib dems do better in bye elections.
I’;m afraid my little exercise has proved what I suspected, you are using figures, not to illuminate any truth, but merely to support your views.
This is all really ABC stuff, you know, I suggest that you get rid of your biases when using figures as we all know that, if figures do not lie, people do. Better luck next time.
06 - Oh dear oh dear I seem to have a stalker (I presume you are an individual and not someone else hiding behind a different name).
Proud to be smug, proud to be superior, proud to be arrogant and proud to annoy people like you.
I would feel that I wasn’t doing my job if I didn’t rouse people to anger. Job done.
Altogether now -
“Accentuate the positive,
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between”
Thanks to Zebidee on other thread, two minor changes, the lib dem swing is actually *to* the tories in 1987 hence the swingback is even more of an outlier at 14.4%
For 2005 I had used the UK results making a 0.2% increase in the swing to lib dems so that the swingback is now 8.4% not 8.6%.
The swing over the election period from 79 to 06 is of the order of 9.9% from conservatives to lib dems.
54,55,61,63,91,94.
They say a picture speaks a thousand words. So what can the picture show us?
One salient thing it shows is that the model has NEVER significantly UNDER-estimated an OPPOSITION performance….
(look at the bars below the trendline, and their distance from the line.)
The worst the model performed(and it was still less than 1% out!) was in 1992, which is interestingly counter-historical, for it implies Kinnock’s Labour party - rather than somehow grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory(the supposed historical consensus) - actually performed a bit BETTER than they ought to have done! Conclusion? In 1992, expectations exceeded reality( a lesson for today, perhaps…)
The other salient feature is that on the occasions when the model HAS perfomed badly, it has ALWAYS been by UNDER-estimating GOVERNMENT performance…. (look at the bars above the trendline, and their distance from the line.)
The worst the model performed was in 1970. Again, the historical consensus is that Wilson somehow lost the 1970 election unexpectedly, against the prediction of opinion polls. The model suggest - on the contrary, Labour were never going to win, and Wilson did exceptionally well to come as close as he did… Heath should have won by a landslide. Conclusion? the 1970 polls were wrong (and/or Wilson was the most personally popular Prime Minister in history..)
Just a final FACT for the naysayers. The dataset consisted of 417 by-elections and 16 General Elections….
Very interesting theory Rod……..and yet more reason for those very excitable Tories to relax, smell the roses and gear themselves for a serious push in 2014
101 - the Lib Dem litertaure NEVER said that Abbotts spent a gap year working in an orphanage.
It said that ‘during a gap year’ [he had] “spent some time working at an orphanage in Madras and my experiences there have really stayed with me.”
As far as I am aware no-one has disputed the factuality of this statement.
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He followed this post with an (implicit, naturally) apology for his failure to follow one of Grices maxims of manner….
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