An update on my previous posts

A fair bit of time has passed since my previous posts, partially this has been through lack of time and partially through choice. I've been busy, but there's been a lot I haven't wanted to cover for various reasons, often not really having much of note to say about them.

However, one thing that I really should have mentioned at the time has occured. By my own admission I did rush my post on polling, and this was largely because I was expecting a post-mortem on the polling of the 2015 election in quite short time. And, over a month ago, this did appear. A concise summary from the horse's mouth can be found here, and for those with a more academic bent the paper is also online.

To summarise the summary - there's no evidence for a late swing, undecided voters breaking for the Tories or a 1992-style "Shy Tory" effect. What was found was that people were far less likely to vote than they claimed to pollsters (approximately 92% of people said they had voted, versus 66% of the country that actually did), and that those people who claimed incorrectly they were going to vote were disproportionately Labour supporters.

They also noted that polls tended to undersample elderly voters and oversample other age groups, which they think may have also contributed to the error on the polls - though they acknowledge that weighting may have corrected this to some degree and mark this out as an area for further study.

I'm sure the polling companies will be pleased at this analysis, my thoughts were that ICM's idea of bad sampling was the cause of the errors in the polls was probably correct. What the post-mortem reveals is a comparatively simple thing to correct, as sampling issues would be extremely difficult to resolve. More publications are likely to be coming, so if you're interested you should keep up to date here.

As politics is not just polls it's also worth having a look at the fortunes of the parties since the election. I'll begin with the Greens and Plaid Cymru as I've pretty much nothing to say about them so far. I've not heard of anything interesting about them recently, though perhaps someone more informed on devolved politics might have something to say about Plaid.

I'm not entirely sure I've too much to say about the SNP either. They seem even monumentally popular in Scotland, they've performed some eye-catching stunts in Westminister, and Mhairi Black seems to have impressed the media. They're definitely doing well for themselves but haven't the influence they'd have been hoping for in May. This said, they've been a thorn in the government's side, though they've yet to deliver a truly major scalp.

There is, of course, the drama regarding Orkney & Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael and his denial that he leaked a memo relating to the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon. Recently a televised trial was held but judgement has not yet been handed down. If Carmichael is found guilty then this leads to an interesting legal precedent, vastly expanding the scope of the (currently fairly narrow) law the case is built on. It would also lead to the first parliamentary by-election since the general election. However if he is found innocent then nothing interesting happens, and from my minimal understanding of the law the case looks shaky and the burden of proof high. Regardless of what happens this is more about Carmichael's judgement rather than the SNP anyway, the SNP is not formally a party in the case.

Alistair Carmichael - defendent.

Carmichael is a Liberal Democrat, and I would like to talk about that party next. The Lib Dems have suffered for lack of media exposure so far this parliament, and this is unsurprising. They are no longer in government and their parliamentary party is severely reduced so the spotlight is harder to grab. This is not for want of trying, but a return to pre-Clegg positions and a well regarded new leader can only do so much.

However, they have been performing decently in other ways since the elections. We can look at this by checking up on council by-elections, which occur very frequently and are ignored by most of the media. Obviously they are local affairs, so individually their relevance to national affairs is small, but together they provide a steady flow of real voting data mid-parliament. There have been 55 council by-elections (excluding town councils) and the results are summarised below, save one by-election that was held under new boundaries.

Council by-election results

OMG are Orkney Manifesto Group, THF are Tower Hamlets First - the kind of small parties you tend to only see at a local level.

The Lib Dems weren't relevant contenders in many of these races, but they seemed to do well where they were in the running. Only one ward lost and a fair clutch gained, a good start for them. The results ward-by-ward do vary a lot; in their weaker areas they are still getting truly derisory vote shares, below 1% in more than one case, but they have also pulled off stunning increases in vote share in others:

Lib Dem By-Election Results

Squarespace has a limit on how much can go on a graph, so sadly I had to exclude some by-elections. I excluded by-elections with the smallest vote changes, which happened to be about 2% either way. If you're wondering, those were all wards where the Lib Dems did terribly.

I think it's clear to see that the Lib Dems are recovering decently in some parts of the country already, mostly in places where they have usually been the first or second party. It's still early days for them and the party remains extremely fragile but I'd imagine some local parties will be feeling optimistic about regaining lost ground in 2020.

In contrast to this, if we look at the same by-election data for UKIP we can see that they have done quite poorly. They've even lost more seats than they've held, this is not unusual for UKIP as even in the last parliament "UKIP hold" were strange and unusual words, but they usually had a stream of by-election wins to more than compensate.So far in this parliament this has not happened. Their changes in vote share have also been dramatic but, unlike the Lib Dems' changes, move in both directions.

UKIP By-Election Results

By-elections were excluded by smallest change in vote again, as UKIP swings tend to be large this means changes in vote share of less than 8% were excluded.

At a first glance, the results are not good. On a closer inspection, they are still not good. Every single increase in the UKIP voteshare bar one has been where they did not previously stand a candidate (1% to 1.9% in a Glasgow ward being the exception) and while getting 20% of the vote from a standing start is not to be sniffed at surely this says something negative about how people perceive UKIP councillors. If UKIP is fading after the election, this might be evidence for it.

Even if this isn't the case, it's clear that they have failed to advance since May. A few things of note have happened with UKIP: there was of course Nigel Farage's famous unresignation, which wasn't exactly the most professional thing I've seen; there was also the furore over Douglas Carswells' rejection of Short money and the usual trickle of UKIP candidates expressing racist or far right views and getting suspended. That last kind of story is, sadly, par for the course.

It's too early to be too gloomyabout their prospects, it's possible that they could have a resurgence around the time of the EU referendum but for now at least they're no longer the lightning rod of attention that they were in the last parliament. They are, at best, holding steady.

Douglas Carswell - one of many people who have, at some point, sparked an internal UKIP row.

A party that's had a truly bad time of it is Labour. In the first post-election budget an array of cuts to welfare were announced, and acting Labour leader Harriet Harman adopted the position that Labour MPs should not oppose these cuts. This caused an uproar and eventually she adopted the curious compromise position that Labour MPs should support an amendment criticising the cuts but abstain on the welfare bill if the amendment did not pass.

In the end three of the four Labour leadership candidates; Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Jeremy Corbyn; stated opposition to the bill but only Corbyn was among the forty-eight Labour rebels when the bill passed. All other candidates abstained. This generated a lot of negative press for the party and caused a protracted and visible division within Labour, extending the bad headlines. The SNP and Liberal Democrats unanimously voted against the changes without any internal conflicts, which could only have worsened the pain for Labour.

Furthermore the Labour leadership election, which I had expected to be a silver lining after their bad election night, has proven to be anything but. I had mentioned three potential candidates from recent Labour intakes in my first post; Dan Jarvis, Chuka Ummuna and Liz Kendall; of these only Liz Kendall has actually run for leader (though Ummuna briefly ran before dropping out). She is currently firmly in last place, in polls and in nominations, and her positions have been seen as very right wing for Labour. She has not proven to be a bright hope for the party and is even often accused of being a Tory by Labour's left wing.

Instead the momentuum has been with the most left wing candidate, Jeremy Corbyn, who only gained enough support to even enter the race in the last minutes before the deadline. His opponents have accused him of being too left wing to be electable, and say his positions and comments are easy targets for the right wing media to savage - some have taken shots at him already. He nevertheless enjoys substantial support and unparalleled enthusiasm from his camp - he is the clear favourite to win the contest and he seems to be inspiring people on the left who felt locked out of Labour, and mainstream politics as a whole.

Many have argued that Corbyn's candidacy itself has been a bad thing for Labour, I'm not going to endorse or condemn that view. But I think it clear that his opponents' reactions have definitely been very damaging to Labour. Theallegations of unelectability, the alleged intervention to try and run one anti-Corbyn candidate or even the suggestions to call off the vote have provided fodder for the Conservatives should Corbyn win. In the process these moves have made Corbyn's opponents within Labour look shabby, a lose-lose situation for the party. Whether or not Corbyn wins, the near future of Labour will be interesting, positive or negative.

The Conservatives have not had such a terrible time of it, but they are also not as dominant as the media seems to imply. Although they've avoided the severe drama Labour is suffering and haven't lost many major votes, they still only have a slim majority in the Commons and they are outnumbered vastly in the Lords. They've avoided big defeats where they look likely simply by kicking legislation into the long grass or by giving ground to whoever is applying most pressure at the moment, which is good politics but betrays weakness.

Jeremy Corbyn - the saviour or the devil depending on what Labour member you speak to.

For example, they had legislation ready to repeal the English ban on fox hunting. Kicked into the long grass when the SNP said they would not abstain. Their high profile proposal to repeal the Human Rights Act. Also kicked into the long grass, this time due to pressure from moderate Conservatives. Northern devolution. Not kicked into the long grass. However substantial changes were made in the Lords by Labour and the Liberal Democrats over votes for 16-17 year olds and objections to elected mayors. The government also suffered their first Commons defeat at the hands of eurosceptic rebels over the purdah rules surrounding the EU referendum, though I'm sure most people expected Europe to be problematic to this government.

They have shown great ability at avoiding the impression of public crisis that the Major government suffered with, but it seems clear to me that they are also having a fair bit of trouble pushing through parts of their agenda.

Overall, although it's early days yet, I still broadly think what I did in May - no-one's a real winner in this parliament. Certainly the SNP are riding high, but it's clear that they are not kingmakers; the Conservatives have their majority but a close look reveals they are having quite a lot of problem passing legislation; the Liberal Democrats seem to be recovering but their green shoots may be easy to crush again. With Labour's leadership results to be announced and a major referendum just over the horizon perhaps things will be shaken up in the near future, but for now I think everyone remains a loser in some sense.

Post-script: Figures for the by-election graphs were compiled from Britain Elects and ALDC. At the time of posting they are already slightly out of date, as the results of a crop of by-elections came in as I wrote. The results were: an additional SNP hold, two LAB holds, two CON holds and a LAB gain from GRN. The biggest swing was towards the Liberal Democrats in Tunbridge Wells (+24.1%), with the second largest being against the Conservatives in the same ward (-22.7%) and the third being against UKIP in Sandwell (-20%).

I've no intention of updating the graphs any time soon, though I might well come back later to replace and expand them if I can get some nicer JavaScript charts working on SquareSpace.