Just to recap

Monday, June 08, 2009

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/

Just to recap

For reference, here are the key statistics of the election (so far):

Conservatives came first taking 28.6 percent of the vote, with 24 MEPs. UKIP came second receiving 17.4 percent, winning 13 MEPs. Labour took 15.3 percent, also picking up 13 MEPs. The Lib-Dims crawled in fourth with 13.9 percent of the vote, getting 10 seats. The Greens took 8.7 percent and two MEPs. The BNP won two seats, in Yorkshire and the Humber, where it gained 10 percent of the vote, and in the North-West, getting 8 percent of the vote. Turnout was 34.8 percent.

By contrast, in the 2004 elections the Tories pulled 26.7 percent of the vote and Labour got 22.6. UKIP grabbed 16.1 percent, beating the Lib-Dems into third place, trailing with 14.9 percent. The Greens got 6.3 and the BNP 4.9 percent. Then, the candidates were fighting for 78 seats, the electorate producing a turnout of 38.2 percent.

COMMENT THREAD

Number crunching – 1

The post-mortems are in full flow – with a good discussion on National Review. We thus we thought we would have a closer look at each of the regions to see what, if anything, a detailed analysis of the figures tells us.

Making a start on home territory, Yorkshire makes a fascinating case study of the electoral system in practice. As a reminder, the crude figures are as follows:

Conservatives 299,802 (24.5 percent, down 0.2), Lab 230,009 (18.8 percent, down 7.5), UKIP 213,750 (17.4 percent, up 2.9), Lib-Dims 161,552 (13.2 percent, down 2.4), BNP 120,456 (8.5 percent, up 1.8) Greens 104,456 (8.5 percent, up 2.8), English Democrats 31,287, SLP 19,380, Christian Party 16,742, No2EU 15,614, Jury Team 7,181, Libertas 6,268.

This was on a turnout of 32.3 percent. Thus, 1,226,180 people voted out of an electorate of 3,792,415.

The first and most obvious thing that emerges is that none of the three main Westminster parties made any gains in voting share. The Tories dropped marginally, Labour nose-dived and the Lib-Dims were lacklustre.

What is also fascinating though is the voting share of the what the pollsters like to call the "others". Taking UKIP, BNP, the Greens, English Democrats, the SLP, the Christian Party, No2EU, Jury Team and Libertas, their combined vote was 519,520 or 42.3 percent of the total votes cast.

In terms, significantly more people voted for the "others" than they did the lead party – the Conservatives – which only took 24.5 percent of the vote. In fact, since all three Westminster parties only took 56.5 percent of the vote, there was very nearly parity between the established parties and the rest.

The next thing of interest is the "anti-EU" vote. Here, we can take UKIP, BNP, the English Democrats, the SLP and No2EU as the core vote. Collectively, they polled 400,487 which, at 32.7 percent share, far outstrips the winning Conservative vote. In other words, the Tories, with their pro-EU policy are firmly in the minority.

When the anti-Lisbon treaty vote is examined, however, we can add in the Tories, the Christian Party, Jury Team and Libertas. That brings the vote to 700,289 or 57 percent of the vote cast. It can be assumed, therefore, that in Yorkshire at least, the government has no mandate whatsoever to implement the Lisbon treaty.

Overall, another factor that emerges is how seriously some of the polls have been under-estimating the "others". A YouGov opinion poll in January, for instance, had the Conservatives on 35 percent, Labour on 29 percent and the Lib-Dims on 15 percent, accounting for 79 percent of the total vote, giving the rest a mere 21 percent. In fact, at 42.3 percent, they scored double that – an error margin of over 100 percent.

Interestingly, in June, however, another YouGov poll had the Westminster parties on 57 percent, putting the "others" at 43 percent, as near spot-on as can be achieved.

Where the "others" form such a large part of the electorate, polling dynamics change considerably and it cannot be assumed that these will not bleed through into the general election.

In the 2005 election, we drew attention to what we called the "Ukip effect" where the votes cast to the others considerably exceeded the victor's winning margin. Variously, we estimated that this could have cost the Tories 25 or more seats.

With a resurgent UKIP, and a more aggressive BNP, plus the other tiddlers in the field, we could be looking at a completely unpredictable electoral picture where all the old assumptions are no longer valid.

And, although the EU will not feature highly in the general, Andrew Stuttaford suspects that it is a mistake to think that the increasing powerlessness of the Westminster parliament will mean that voters will feel that it's "safe" to vote for BNP in a national election. If they are angry enough, he writes, they won't care one way or the other about that, but that's a big "if."

As far as it goes though, there are bigger "ifs".

COMMENT THREAD

Who's laughing now?

"The British National Party achieved its most significant electoral breakthrough last night when it won two seats in the European Parliament."

That is the view of the augustLondon Times - a value judgement rather than a straight reporting of fact. What, after all, does "significant" mean?

If the experience of UKIP in 1999 is any guide, when it managed to get three MEPs elected, last night's events mean not very much at all. The combined forces of the establishment, including the political classes and the media managed to encapsulate UKIP, declining to report its activities and driving it into near obscurity.

Certainly, not reporting issues is something at which the British media excels and, after what will be a brief flurry of recriminations, that bit of the establishment will settle down to do what it does so well. Very quickly, Nick Griffin will find that being elected to a remote, irrelevant institution provides very little in the way of a platform. As before, every attempt will be made to ignore him.

What will make the difference is whether he and his Yorkshire colleague Andrew Brons can avoid the internal party bickering that came with UKIP's success, and build a firm foundation for further electoral success. But for the fluke of Kilroy's intervention in 2004, and the amazing fluke of the MPs' expenses issue breaking when it did, UKIP would be on its way down and out.

Internally, BNP is as big a mess as was UKIP. It is going to be struggling to rise above its own internal party rivalries and jealousies and, in a sense, yesterday's success will be a challenge for it. It will either make or break the party.

Here, its strongest asset is the visceral hatred exhibited by establishment which fails to understand that BNP's attraction to those who increasingly feel disenfranchised is precisely that it is hated by the establishment. Griffin has been clever enough to understand that and, the more vitriol that is directed at his party, the easier he will find it to attract voters.

The response, of course, should be to take on the BNP full frontal. Its prejudices are obvious, its politics are loathsome and its policies are incoherent. Against an open, intelligent, coherent challenge, it would not last five minutes.

Where the traditional parties have their difficulties though are that they too are unable to offer coherent policies. Not least, they are constantly having to hide or deny that "elephant in the room", the European Union – which has given the BNP its opening. And, as long as the major parties attempt to build their own electoral base on a foundation of deception and lies, their support will always be fragile and prone to peeling off by the "extremists".

It is, therefore, all very well for ConHome to complain – as it is doing – that Labour opened the way for BNP's victory. In another time, some of those voters who broke away to vote for BNP should rightly – as they did with Thatcher's time – have voted Conservative. That they did not is as much a reflection of the Tories as it is Labour.

And neither is there any mileage to be gained from killing the messenger. We would like to think that we picked up the vibes earlier than many and werewriting freely on what is, after all, a political phenomenon.

That we write about the BNP does not imply or in any way convey our support for that party, any more than the MSM and the blogs who are today writing about the same subject. We just got in earlier, before the event, warning about something we felt might happen and now has.

Nor, despite establishment attempts to encapsulate the boil, can it be assumed that BNP can be safely contained. The reason why so many people felt it "safe" to vote for BNP as a protest was because, ultimately, the EU parliament does not matter. Conventional wisdom has it that they will come into the fold for the general election.

However, increasingly, people are beginning to realise that the Westminster parliament doesn't matter either. As long as we are ruled by the malign nexus of Brussels, international and largely obscure organisations and the growing ranks of the quangos (one of which is to take control of parliament), that realisation will grow. With it will lift any restraint on voting for such parties as BNP.

What will be the measure of success however, will not be the noise but the silence. The silence of the politicos about BNP is testament to how scared they are running, we wrote earlier. A healthy political system could take on the BNP with ease and defeat it. If the political parties maintain their silence, Griffin can only prosper. In that silence, you will hear him laughing.