Thursday 7 May 2015

Election Live Blog (not)


We don't do live blogs here at ITBB...

However...crikey, what a BBC exit poll!

326 seats are needed for a majority. The BBC (and others) are predicting:
316 Conservatives (+10)
239 Labour (-19)
58 SNP (+52)
10 Liberal Democrats (-47)
4 Plaid Cymru (+1)
2 UKIP (+2)
2 Greens (+1)
DUP 8
Others 11 (+1)
If correct, the Conservatives and what's left of the Liberal Democrats could form a majority coalition government.

As could the Conservatives the DUP and UKIP. (Nigel Farage as Foreign Minister?)

It's early days, it's early days.

And, boy, this poll could be stupendously wrong.

Paddy Ashdown is already promising to literally...literally...eat his hat if this poll is right. YouGov are predicting the Lib Dems will have over 30 seats. Paddy thinks it's simply wrong - "a certain error".

22.52 Ultra-safe Sunderland South first to declare. Woefully behind target, time-wise. Massive swing to UKIP, now in second place. Tories just behind them. Is Sunderland swinging right?

23.00 Laura K - rumours Ed Balls has lost his seat. Oh, please let that happen!!! (I hoped that last time with similar rumours. Didn't happen).

23.01 The man who polluted politics in the UK, Ali Campbell, is on. He doesn't believe the exit poll either. He'll "eat his kilt" if it's right.

etc.

I'll stop now.

27 comments:

  1. David Preiser8 May 2015 at 01:32

    The Spectator says Farage has lost South Thanet, which is seriously depressing. So if the prediction is UKIP will have 2, it would be Carswell and maybe Akers, if not Reckless. I expected they'd have maybe 8. I don't know enough to say if their nice, steady percentage share is spread around too thinly for it to actually win them more seats. If it's only those two, we can expect the BBC to say UKIP is finished, meaningless, spurned by the public as if they were a rabid dog, even if the Watermelons have only loony Lucas and the BBC still gives them favorable treatment.

    But there is reason to be cheerful: it looks like George Galloway, darling of the BBC, is out. Jews in Britain can sleep a little easier tonight.

    Balls losing his seat as well would be too good to be true. Both of Flanders' Eds losing big on the same night would probably require that two good people remain in the underworld, à la Orfeo or the Aeneid. Although....maybe Farage losing is the Euridice part of the equation, so.....

    PS: If the Tories win, I bet DB will have a fantastic collection of tweets tomorrow.

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    1. Looking at DB's Twitter feed, you're not wrong about that David. Julia MacFarlane is re-tweeting Owen Jones commiserating with Labour activists. And, DB says, "according to @maitlis Clegg "saved the country"": emily m @maitlis
      Give it a day and history will write Clegg as the man who lost party but saved country. He'll come out of this well.

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    2. Clearly much that is not stupid being ignored in favour of the usual.

      Mary Hockaday, Helen Boaden, etc are going to be penning a series of very firm pleas to desist at this rate.

      That's what gets 'em the big bucks.

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    3. I actually think history will look more kindly on Clegg than the thick, fair-weather Lib Dem voters have.

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  2. David Preiser8 May 2015 at 01:38

    Grant's crush can barely contain her glee while reporting the news from South Thanet.

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    1. DP, Is that me and which crush ? Pouting Jo Coburn ?

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    2. David Preiser8 May 2015 at 14:58

      Yes and yes.

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    3. Ooh, she's in action on the News Channel at this very moment, Grant.

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    4. Damn, I missed her. Looks like another sleepless night for me !

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  3. David Preiser8 May 2015 at 03:43

    So far I've seen Stage Performer Maitlis give credit to every other party for gains which take away from the Lib Dems in whatever constituency, except UKIP. Even though UKIP clearly, by the numbers, took votes away from the Lib Dems in at least two places - i.e. Lib Dems down almost the exact same percentage UKIP was up, with negligible change for the other parties - no credit given. In fact, in one of the results she simply waves her hands at the chart and said it wasn't possible to tell how the votes swung away from the Lib Dems. The BBC's "UKIP Is Dead!" agenda tonight is so obvious.

    I'm also enjoying the clenched jaw and sad tone every time she announces a Labour loss.

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    1. Apparently (well, my sources have learned), Panorama has started a post-mortem special complementing Labour's, provisionally-entitled 'Was #GE2015 the BBC's Operaation Clarke County?"

      But it seems Newsnight's top brass is in a snit, for some reason, and Tony has had to intervene, even though he was in the midst of vetting the HIGNFY Election Special script to take out any funny bits about people not currently laughing.

      Just speculation for now; will confirm when I know more.

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  4. David Preiser8 May 2015 at 04:20

    More BBC elite bubble cluelessness, this time from Dimbleby, when reacting to Simon Hughes losing his seat. He unintentionally emphasized a narrative heard other times: Oh, what a shame that someone who has spent his entire career, so many years, in public service, loses this way. Oh, how awful that these career politicians who've held the same yoke on the people's necks for 30 years or more can no longer have their job that they love.

    Dimbleby even felt it was necessary to point out that Hughes was very involved in his constituency, fingerprints all over the local activities, for decades, as if that was somehow an argument against getting rid of him. Mmmms and other noises of accord from Big Bird Kuenssberg and Red Andy.

    Even Peter Hain gets it. That's how out of touch the BBC is.

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  5. David Preiser8 May 2015 at 13:33

    Conservative majority, Galloway out, St. Vince out, Balls out, Labour in the wilderness. BBC gutted!

    Long faces in the BBC News studio this morning. Red Andy and Huw Edwards currently forecasting difficulties ahead for the Tories, as they had problems soon after the last time they won a majority in 1992. Naturally.

    Now the BBC is questioning Miliband's message during the campaign? They found it mostly awesome until now. Even last night they were cooing over how well he had performed in spite of negative predictions by mean people.

    Face it, Beeboids: Miliband screwed himself when he got angry during that leaders QT and said he was proud of over-spending. Class war is fun, and makes you feel good, but if the leader comes across as a feckless idiot who won't do it properly, it apparently won't win an election.

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  6. David Preiser8 May 2015 at 14:14

    I am not speculating that the wound on Norman Smith's forehead is from him banging his head on the wall in despair last night. The dust hasn't even settled yet and he's already expecting that Labour will come back strong and Cameron will have a "very difficult time in the Commons".

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    1. People at B-BBC were noting that Emily Maitlis was wearing a totally red (Labour) dress last night, probably in anticipation of a Labour win. Well, she's clearly taken note of the electoral sea-change and she's wearing a totally blue (Conservative) dress this afternoon.
      (Jo Coburn's sticking with her usual (Labour) red though).

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    2. Jo will always be my Lady in Red .

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    3. The problem with Maitlis was her demeanor, not the dress. She was reporting the Labour losses as if someone was taking her children away from her, and, with one exception, dismissed the effect of UKIP's significant percentages entirely.

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    4. It's Smith's discomfiture that I have found the most entertaining, closely followed by that of Marr & Maitlis. You can hear their cogs whirring: how can they possibly have voted Tory after we've subjected their party to weeks of biased reporting? It's not fair! My own 'take' is that the biased reporting did, indeed, stigmatize the Tory party, so that people felt deviant & guilty for voting for them, so they lied to the pollsters about their intentions. Nigel Farage was treated abominably &, in the last three weeks or so, starved of publicity - most notably last Thursday, after his excellent, late-evening interview which went unreported (by the BBC).
      Jeremy

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    5. Agreed, Anonymous. Only the Beeboids are now blaming the polls for their bias. They've just done yet another segment with yet more Labourites consoling each other over it.

      It's so much fun seeing all these arrogant, smug political activists with bylines thrashing about, all at sea. You have to wonder, though, how they'll retaliate against the Tories for it.

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  7. How can most of the opinion polls get it so wrong ? Surely they are not biased ? Anyway, I am smiling. I had a fiver on the Tories at 6/1. Sorry about Nigel, I shall miss him. Even more sorry about Scotland and very puzzled.

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    1. David Preiser8 May 2015 at 14:57

      I've just seen Andrew Marr lash out at the pollsters. He said they made the BBC distort their coverage, making Miliband look too good, and talking down the Tories. He then declared that he'd prefer next time to do election coverage without any polls at all. Nodding heads all round.

      It really is unbelievable just how much in denial he and they are about their bias.

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    2. The circle of virtue that has been the BBC, Labour and pollsters has been a joy to behold. More so as they jostle to identify the weakest and savage them for making the others believe what the wanted to hear.

      It is to be hoped no comely interns are in the vicinity should he decide to 'de-stress' again in time-honoured fashion.

      Maybe the BBC should issue junior producers chastity belts?

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  8. It was such a fun night, wasn't it?

    I stayed up and watched it all, and took the day of work today to keep on watching, (I've just had a short nap).

    Pretty much everything worked out perfectly: (a) Labour losing so badly, getting 99 viewer seats than the Conservatives, (b) the Conservatives winning an overall majority, (c) Vince Cable losing his seat, (d) the absolute trouncing of Galloway (and the police being called in on him for good measure), (e) the ousting of Israel-hating David Ward in one of the other Bradford seats (and after all that sucking-up), (f) Ed Balls losing to that very nice Tory lady, (g) Sinn Fein losing a seat, (h) the Tories keeping their Scottish seat and thus getting the same number of seats in Scotland as Labour (after years of Labour taunting), (i) Douglas Carswell holding Clacton and (j) UKIP becoming the second party in 120 seats.

    Nigel Farage winning in Thanet South would have been the cherry on top of the cake, but it wasn't to be. He came close to pulling it off.

    I watch his count live on the News Channel. Laura K & Co. were really quite rude about it, very fired-up. They showed their usual graphics but completely ignored the ones showing the huge, near-SNP-like swing to UKIP there . It was all about him failing - which, to me, shows their particular lack of sympathy for him (i.e. bias).

    Still, that didn't really spoil my night.

    This afternoon's News Channel is like a full-blown Blair-Brown era reunion. We've had a barely recognisable Jacqui Smith and it's now Charles Clarke. Back to the future.

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  9. I thought the BBC’s coverage was pretty good. I didn’t think any of the BBC presenters let their feelings interfere with their professionalism.

    I was quite impressed with the gracious way Ed Balls accepted defeat, but I did think Nick Robinson’s rather elegiac character reference (Balls has a very nice side) was weird. Someone said Ed would make a good consort if Yvette won the leadership. Someone else said, no, he’d be a more of a spectre.

    At least Emily Maitlis mentioned UKip’s achievement without trying to play it down. I’m wondering if the BBC will revert back to default - sidelining UKip, specially if Nigel Farage manages to lie low for a while.

    My own schadenfreude is from the decisive rejection of Galloway and David Ward, to a lesser extent Vince Cable, of course Ed Balls, Ming Campbell etc, but most of all I was pleased at the complete ineffectuality of all those celebrities and their stupid endorsements. Russell Brand and Eddie Izzard, ha very ha.

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  10. The BBC is trying to whip up concern about fears from Europe. The French are very concerned, the Tories winning is a "political earthquake", European leaders are concerned that Cameron's insistence on renegotiating will lead to "the breakup of the EU as we know it".

    This is post-mortem on Labour and BBC coverage, not really coverage of the rather historic spectacle of the Tories winning their first majority in

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    1. Fear not! - I am in France now & the papers' main preoccupation is this 'bizarre' business of falling on one's sword when one's party loses an election. The feeling seems to be that the French would like to import the custom!
      Jeremy

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  11. OMFG, some BBC News female just now asked the guy from Strathclyde U (the pollster who is supervisor of all the pollsters), whether or not these polls being wrong actually helped the Tories win! The man said no, and she interrupted him by asking if polls underestimating the Tories helped the win.

    Desperate, desperate stuff, BBC. Apparently now there will be some inquiry into pollster practices. The BBC is furious and will use the full weight of the Corporation to pressure these pollsters into apologizing, and may very well seek penalties for making the Beeboids look bad. Never mind that the polls got everything else right, almost exactly.

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