DCWoody
Posts: 1401
Joined: 10/27/2006
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A bit of background.....there are ~12 parties in UK parliament, depending how you count it...and universally expected to be even more split after this election (May 6th FYI), however....the big 3 nationally are Labour (current government, center left economics(by british standards) authoritarian(by british standards)) Conservative (previous government, center right economics, authoritarian) and the Liberal Democrats (alliance of mostly left but some right wing economics, brought together by interest in liberty).
For a couple of years, the polling has shown cons clearly in the lead over labour, with libs a far third.....the Liberal party hasn't been in government, for ~100 years, neither has it been the 2nd placed party.
For the last 6 months or so, approaching the election, cons were polling high 30s, labour low 30s, libs high teens.
Conservative supporters were hoping for a roughly 40/30/20 picture, leading to comfortable conservative majority in the house of commons. Labour supporters were hoping cons would fall to mid 30s and they'd rise to mid 30s, leading to labour victory.....Libs were just hoping to hang on to the 22% achieved in 2005....when they gained a considerable boost by being the only main party to oppose the Iraq war.
On 14th of April, yougov (very accurate firm) showed a picture of
Cons 41, labour 32, libs 18.
All the parties released their manifesto, official policies, etc...about then...and suddenly two polls came out showing
Cons 37, Labour 31, liberal 22
and then
Cons 34, Labour 29, liberal 27
27 being far higher than libs have scored in any election for ~100 years.
Then there was a 3-way televised debate between the leaders
Polls since then have shown (in date order)
Cons 33, Labour 28, liberal 30
Cons 31, Labour 27, liberal 29
Cons 31, Labour 28, liberal 32
Cons 33, Labour 30, liberal 29
and yesterday from yougov
Cons 32, Labour 26, liberal 33
Thats a 15 POINT GAIN IN 4 DAYS, putting the Lib-dems in the lead, having taken points roughly equally from cons & labour. The completely unexpected change has made all the previous calculators for how this will translate to seats in the real world* unrealiable, and when cons were looking like an easy win, now nobody has a clue....with as many as 5 possible Prime Ministers you wouldn't bet your house against now.
Gonna be an interesting few weeks to say the least....
*roughly speaking labour have a ~5 point advantage % to seats over cons, due to geographically concentrated support and out of date boundaries, and cons have ~5% advantage over libs, due to geographically concentrated support......in theory labour could win with just over 30%, cons would need ~35% at least, and libs ~40%.....in practice, it depends massively what the other parties get, and we're in uncharted waters here....
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Massive surprise swing in United Kingdom General Electi... - 
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