please empty your brain below
Superb stats! Easy to forget how Labour dominated post 1997 with a smaller share of the vote than the Tories secured on Thursday!

William | 14.12.19 - 7:34 a.m. | #

Fellow peasants, prepare to be exploited.

John | 14.12.19 - 8:37 a.m. | #

Perhaps this illustrates the issue that Labour has, if you are a 'London Leftie' you live in a world of 48% support, the message you get is that everything is fine, outside London the Conservative share of the vote is slowly climbing, the loss of Scottish seats is a 'whatever' for the Conservatives, but a severed artery for Labour.

As for the Liberal Democrats, they'll need to define what is it is that makes them distinctive post Brexit.

Still Anon | 14.12.19 - 8:50 a.m. | #

Brilliantly shows the impact of our first past the post system. The Lib Dem’s gained an extra million votes compared to 2017 and lost a seat, the Tories increased their vote by less than half that and gained 50+ seats.

Busfan | 14.12.19 - 9:06 a.m. | #

FPTP is not a perfect voting system although it does have its advantages including linking MPs to specific constituencies and also designing a system whereby a dominant political party tends to exist at any point in time - ensuring that actions can be taken and commitments delivered (the idea of an “elected five year dictatorship”). However, it does require constituencies to be of approximately equal size which at the moment they are not.

The problem with voting systems that given representation to smaller parties is that entire systems can become skewed by the extremities - as Israel is discovering now. It is possible to have cut offs, e.g. no representation with less than 5% of the vote, but then perversely the SNP would not have come into existence! So pros and cons to all systems.

I do not remember Labour supporters complaining about FPTP when they were in power post 1997 with even more seats on a lower share of the vote.

William | 14.12.19 - 9:41 a.m. | #

Probably time to repost (or at least link to as it's fallen off the bottom of the page) December 3rd's post.

Blue Witch | Homepage | 14.12.19 - 9:41 a.m. | #

...and, more timely, last Saturday's post.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 14.12.19 - 9:46 a.m. | #

Good graphs - shows that the Conservative majority isn't that big compared to previous years.

Saw some regional voting comparisons and the Brexit effect was more stark - the Brexit Party vote was much higher in the North-East and Midlands than the UK averages. That will obviously disappear by the next election.

Jimbo | 14.12.19 - 10:30 a.m. | #

Love these infographics.

Matt | 14.12.19 - 11:50 a.m. | #

For a many a Leaver, the Conservatives were the only party to vote for and that is probably the reason why they got so much support and took the safe Labour seats.

As a Leaver, much against my better judgement, I voted Consertavative as there was no other option. If I’m going to make the effort to vote, I see no point in spoiling a ballot paper.

If there was a Monster Raving Loony Party canditate (Leave), they would have got my vote instead!

Rogmi | 14.12.19 - 11:50 a.m. | #

Labour cannot escape being a complete mess, frankly. If they are leavers then they will alienate the likes of DG and risk losing the cities. I do not think they can really compete the Tories in the countryside.

Patrickov | 14.12.19 - 12:06 p.m. | #

8) - I assume you've done it alphabetically, but it's visually askew having the blue on the left and the red on the right.

Still Anon | 14.12.19 - 12:27 p.m. | #

Given the drop in turnout it would be interesting to see the absolute numbers of votes for each party by year

John | 14.12.19 - 1:52 p.m. | #

The SNP have massively benefited from FPTP also.

If we had some sort of PR system, it would be interesting to see how many votes and seats UKIP and the Brexit Party would have gained over the last decade, as if anything they've done even worse out of FPTP then the Lib Dems and Greens. With PR I doubt Farage would have pulled out of so many seats at this election.

Mikey C | 14.12.19 - 2:09 p.m. | #

Hi DG, are you planning to write another marginal seats post? The previous two were excellent and gave me hope

Brendon Fraser | 14.12.19 - 2:11 p.m. | #

Putting the two largest parties at each end of the chart might have made it easier to see the movements in the Labour vote.

Interesting stats however they are presented though.

timbo | 14.12.19 - 4:47 p.m. | #

I would like to see the stats relating to the non-voting (i.e. are resident but not British) residents for all those years. How Brits vote has to be influenced by how they perceive their local community - mostly now completely transformed by people from every corner of the world.

B | 14.12.19 - 7:43 p.m. | #

When I first saw this post, on my phone as it happened, I thought "I know all this stuff, and I don't much like it and I don't want to wallow in it". But now I've come back to it, on a proper screen, and seen all sorts of subtleties that I did't previously realise. Thanks DG for helping to illustrate stuff that is actually quite fascinating and important (even though I still don't like it!).

Malcolm | 14.12.19 - 8:07 p.m. | #

Sorry if I'm missing something but the bar charts for 2019 votes cast seem to be slightly different in sections 1a and 2 (eg Brexit and Green parties are reversed).

Regards

zin92 | 15.12.19 - 6:34 a.m. | #

In the previous two elections the difference between getting a majority of seats and not doings so was only seven (2015) or eight (2017). This time you would need to look at forty.

Very interesting reading the comments from back then.

timbo | 15.12.19 - 6:45 a.m. | #

Even six weeks ago, I doubt many people expected the Brexit Party to attract only 2% of the vote. Therein lies Boris's landslide.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 15.12.19 - 8:30 a.m. | #

Well, as I said last week, hold on to your hats. Given the size of the majority, we might be looking at Boris until 2029 or beyond.

I find one of the more interesting statistics is the number of votes necessary for each party to win each seat. The SNP do very well, the LibDems and the Greens not so much.

I still think climate change is the biggest issue that is not being gripped yet.

Andrew | 15.12.19 - 10:23 a.m. | #

B... EU citizens (with the exception of Irish and Commonwealth citizens) cannot vote in General Elections.

straphan | 16.12.19 - 3:53 p.m. | #











TridentScan v2.10.0 | Privacy Policy