Analysis: The Rise and Rise of the House of Farage

by Alex Chalmers
Everyone expected the UK Independence Party to perform well in Thursday’s elections, but few accurately predicted the scale of their apparent surge in support. Almost a quarter of those who voted, seemingly disillusioned with all three main parties, turned out to vote for a party that had previously been dismissed as a collection of “fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists”, as well as “clowns”. However, in many ways, the government have only themselves to blame for this high protest vote. Whilst it is important not to dismiss UKIP, it is equally foolish to interpret these results as a fundamental realignment of British politics or an end to the three-party system. Such shock results are not without historic precedent and as parties such as UKIP become more successful, greater scrutiny can bring internal problems and divisions to the fore.

Read More

Opinion: The NEC Elections

By Will Cross (@WillCross61)

The Labour National Executive Committee election results have today been published, and although there was little change in the body’s membership, there are still some interesting conclusions to be drawn from the results.

The political balance of the NEC remains the same, with 3 left wingers, 2 moderates and 1 independent, however, Luke Akehurst has lost his place to Peter Wheeler. I am particularly disappointed in this, as I have been impressed with Luke’s detailed knowledge of the history of Labour and its ideological traditions, and his loyalty and commitment to the party - however, he only narrowly won his seat last time, and he wasn’t helped this time by the negative and personal campaign against him by Left Futures, or his own tendency towards conflict those with differing political views within the party.

Another significant result is that Johanna Baxter was one of the 6 successful candidates. I couldn’t be happier with this result - the Reading Young Labour executive committee endorsed Johanna as their pick, and I told everyone who was interested and then some to vote for her. Having lost the election last time, Johanna was appointed to the NEC to fill a vacancy, but this year she has been elected in her own right - this is particularly impressive as she hasn’t had the backing of either the left or moderate slate, and is, to my knowledge, the first ever independent candidate to be elected to the NEC since it took on its present form in 1998.

The importance of having high profile candidates can bee seen by the fact that Ken Livingstone again topped the poll for the left, despite his numerous shortcomings. The results may be somewhat disappointing for Progress/Labour First, as they have failed to make inroads against the left, and other than Ellie, Peter and Luke, their three other candidates were right down towards the bottom of the poll, suggesting that the moderate wing needs to rethink the type of candidates it puts forward next time. Indeed, the NEC came within a hair's breadth of having 4 left wingers and 1 moderate.

The gap between 6th and 9th place was extremely small, and one result that surprised me was how close the left’s Kate Osamor came to being elected, ending up just 124 votes short on her first attempt. Given the closeness of the results, one issue which concerns me is the extremely shoddy way in which the balloting process was carried out - ballot papers arrived over a week after they were supposed to, with councillors’ papers being the most delayed, some members failed to receive ballot papers at all, the deadline was moved back and yet there was only a 3 hour period on a Monday morning for members to request that their papers be reissued. Most shockingly was the fact that an unknown number of members were sent the wrong ballot papers - my South East ballot contained the PCC candidates for Hampshire, when I in fact live in Berkshire, and despite Electoral Reform Serivces pledging to send out a replacement ballot first class, I only received it after the deadline had passed, as did other local members. With such a small gap between 6th and 9th place, I think it is inevitable that some uncertainly will be cast on the result of the ballot, and Labour needs to investigate the process and consider whether ERS is the right organisation to carry out the internal elections.


The result of the election is displayed below (Red = left slate, Purple = moderate slate, Grey = independents):

Candidate	Votes
LIVINGSTONE, Ken	31682
BLACK, Ann	30240
REEVES, Ellie	23417
SHAWCROFT, Christine	22236
BAXTER, Johanna	20146
WHEELER, Peter	17721
OSAMOR, Kate	17598
AKEHURST, Luke	17475
WILLSMAN, Peter	16786
WILLIAMS, Darren	14641
NOSEGBE, Florence	12745
SMEETH, Ruth	10860
MILLIGAN, Joanne	10034
ATKINSON, Lewis	8968
ALI, Shaukat	6855
GOODLIFFE, Darrell	6147
RICE, Lynda	4864
SIDHU, Rajwant	4726
CARR, Rob	4386



Read More

Breaking Down The Latest YouGov Poll

by
Duncan Bruce (@duncanqbruce)

Recently Labour has been celebrating some good polling results with all the pollsters agreeing that Labour is ahead, but disagreeing as to what degree. YouGov is an entirely 'online' pollster, meaning it draws its data only from its online users rather than telephone canvassing. On the face of it that sounds like a method that would not produce an accurate result but YouGov weights its data in order of sex, age, region to gain an accurate reflection of the country's voting intention, and indeed recently YouGov was the closest pollster on the 2012 London Mayoral Election and the 2012 Local Elections.

So what is YouGov saying the country's voting intention is? Well the headline figure for Labour is very good - Labour leads by 14-points on 45% with the Tories on 31%. The Liberal Democrats have collapsed from their 27% in 2010 to 9% and UKIP is now on 9%.

Labour's biggest lead is in the 18-24 year old age group where Labour has a 35-point lead over the Tories. The Tories will take a gamble with this age group (as they have previously) and presume it won't vote, I personally think that's a mistake. Young people are feeling more and more irrelevant under the coalition with no effort being made to bring down youth unemployment and young people feeling like they are saddled with debt on leaving university.  The Tories' biggest problem (in their eyes) will be the 25-39 and the more important 40-59 age groups, groups that repeatedly vote in general elections. In both these age groups Labour has 50% of the vote with the Tories fighting with the Liberal Democrats, UKIP, the Green Party, Plaid and the SNP for the remaining portion of the vote.  In the Tories' safest age group, 60+, they continue to win, however they've dropped from their position of over 50% of the vote with UKIP now making massive gains in this demographic.

Obviously with all polling there is a margin or error, however with a 14-point lead regardless of that margin, Labour would form the next government.

Results if the election were conducted tomorrow:
On the current boundaries:
Labour: 390 seats (+132) - Reading West would be a Labour gain, Reading East most likely a Labour gain.
Conservative: 214 (-92)
Liberal Democrats: 21 (-36)
Others: 7 (-4)
Labour majority of 130 seats

On the revised boundaries:
Labour: 365 seats (+107) - Reading West would be a Labour gain, Reading East most likely a Labour gain.
Conservative: 200 (-105)
Liberal Democrats: 12 (-45)
Others: 7 (-4)

Labour majority of 130 seats

Neither of the Reading parliamentary seats are affected by boundary changes so in both projections they are the same.

The latest YouGov poll also indicated that 61% of people asked disapproved of the government's record to date, with only 23% approving.  Labour is also seen as leading on the NHS, education and schools, taxation, unemployment and the economy. The Conservatives are seen as leading on Europe, asylum and immigration, and law and order. Neither David Cameron or Ed Miliband came out of the YouGov poll looking fantastic but in the key question "in touch with the concerns of ordinary people" Ed Miliband scored 23% whereas David Cameron scored a disastrous 5% - that's right, out of every 100 people asked, only 5 would say that David Cameron is in touch with the concerns of ordinary people.

Link to the YouGov data

Seat projections were compiled using UK Polling Report's Seat Calculator

Graphics are courtesy of the BBC.

Read More

Analysis: Reading Local Elections 2012

by
Will Cross (@WillCross61)

There were a lot of really good results for Reading Labour in this month's council elections, in which we regained majority control of the council. Labour replicated the successes of the previous year by winning Redlands, Church and Katesgrove wards, the latter seeing the Liberal Democrat vote collapse to the extent that they nearly came third to the Tories.

But as well as winning those target seats, Labour also succeeded in wards which had not been the focus of central Reading Labour campaigning. In Kentwood ward, Daya Pal Singh managed to win on his third attempt, and in Caversham ward, Richard Davies managed to beat the incumbent Tory with almost 50% of the vote. I'm particularly proud of the Caversham result, as the activists for the campaign were almost entirely Reading Young Labour members, and we achieved the best swing to Labour of the night (13.1% compared with the Borough-wide average of 5.7%). In 2010 Labour came third with under a quarter of the vote, which we have now doubled.

Labour managed to increase its vote in every ward it won in 2011, with Norcot becoming Labour's safest ward with 68.8% of the vote. It's interesting to compare Norcot now to as it was in 2008 (the last time a local election has taken place without a general election/referendum also taking place), since then there has been a huge 17.5% swing to Labour from the Conservatives.

While Labour is very pleased with the results, Tory MP Rob Wilson must be bitterly disappointed; out of the 11 wards up for election in his constituency, his party won only three (Thames ward, which saw a drop in Tory vote of 9.7%, Mapledurham, which saw a swing against Isobel Ballsdon, and Peppard ward which had a huge 23.8% swing against the Conservatives due to Jamie Chowdhary standing as an independent - you can find more details of the issues in that ward by clicking here). As well as only managing to win Thames, Mapledurham and Peppard, Rob Wilson and his team were crushed by the Liberal Democrats in Woodley who managed to win in the seats they had lost to the Tories in 2011.

In Reading West the Conservatives also suffered badly with the Tories being pushed out the Borough, failing to hold or gain any seats.

Naturally it would be foolish to suggest that these results will mean Labour will necessarily gain the parliamentary seats in Reading, but the results do suggest the Tories will be in for a tough fight, and I know myself, Reading Young Labour and Reading Labour Party will be taking that fight to them.

Read More

Analysis: Thursday, 1st March's By-elections

by
Duncan Bruce (@duncanqbruce)

In what may become a regular feature I will be looking at some of the by-elections that occur every Thursday around the country and see what those results may mean for Labour and whether it could indicate a national or regional trend.

This week there we two by-elections, Castle ward (Cumbria County Council) and Abbey ward (Shropshire County Council, the most interesting of the two being Castle ward as it features all three major political parties vying for control.

The by-election in Castle ward promised to be a showdown, the seat was fairly safe for the Liberal Democrats but in 2011 they were hit with a massive swing against them, and Labour gained it the City Council seat.  The question for Carlisle Labour was would that trend hold? and would they be able to gain the County Council seat in the ward?, the results are in:

Labour: 407
LibDem: 369
Conservative: 93
Green: 54
UKIP: 22

Based on the County Council elections of 2009, thats a huge 8.2% swing from Liberal Democrat to Labour, but when you take into account the 2011 Carlisle City election you find that its actually just over 2% swing back to Liberal Democrat from Labour. This is fairly in keeping with by-elections, Labour tends to poll lower because our vote, partially due to demographic, only votes when there is a town/city/country-wide election.

2010 Carlisle General Election Result

What is also interesting about the result is the poor Tory showing. The Conservatives in Carlisle have a problem, in 2010 they did what many said was impossible and gained the Carlisle MPs seat, a seat which had been held by Labour since 1964; However all is not perfect as their victory was small, they gained the seat by a little over 800 votes making it one of Labour's top targets to gain in 2015 and making it almost impossible for them to hold.  As well as this the Conservative control of Carlisle City Council has begun to fade, Labour currently has 24 Councillors with the Tories on 22 and the Liberal Democrats on 3 - The Conservatives are currently hanging on to minority control of the council with the 'unofficial' support of the Independents and the Liberal Democrats.

The other by-election was for Shropshire County Council and saw the Liberal Democrats win a seat off the Conservatives. The reason I am not going to focus on this one is that simply its hard to form an analyses without having Labour in the mix, however one thing that does appear to be developing which could be a factor in 2015 is that when its Labour vs. LibDem, Labour almost always win, but when its Tory vs. LibDem the LibDem vote does tend to hold (although that did not happen here in Reading in Tilehurst ward). The results:

LibDem: 550
Conservative: 542
Green: 123

A swing of 10.2% to the Liberal Democrats from the 2009 election.

Graphics courtesy of the BBC.

Read More