British election live

Live commentary on counting for the British general election.

10:05am Wednesday December 18: A post-election YouGov poll of over 40,000 respondents has the startling finding that low-income people voted Tory by greater margins than high-income people.  The Tories won the middle class (ABC1) by 43-33 and the working class (C2DE) by 48-33 (44-40 and 44-42 respectively in 2017).  The Tories won those with the lowest educational attainment by 58-25 (55-33 in 2017).  Labour won those with the highest educational attainment 43-29 (49-32 in 2017).

3:25pm Saturday: Conversation article up.  I believe a major cause for the bad Labour loss was its Brexit policy, but another important difference from 2017 was real wage growth: -0.5% before the 2017 election vs +1.7% in the latest available data.  People are only willing to vote for left-wing policies if they are not doing well financially.  There’s also US politics stuff in that article.

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is an honorary associate at The University of Melbourne. His work on electoral matters for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.

7:50am Saturday: The Conservatives HELD St Ives overnight with an increased majority over the Lib Dems.  Final seat numbers are 365 Tories (up 47), 203 Labour (down 59), 48 SNP (up 13) and 11 Lib Dems (down one).  I will have a write-up for The Conversation later today.

7:10pm Most polls had the Tory lead over Labour at nine to 12 points; the final result will be 11.5 points, so most polls were about right.  Survation, Ipsos, Opinium and Kantar had the Tory lead at either 11 or 12 points, and are the best pollsters.  The worst were ComRes (just a five point lead) and ICM (six points).

7:03pm How the Britain Elects Poll Tracker compares to the actual results excluding Northern Ireland.  William Bowe has said the two majors were too high in the polls, but most UK polls exclude Northern Ireland.

6:13pm: In Northern Ireland, the DUP won eight of the 18 seats (down two), Sinn Fein seven (no change), the Social Democratic Labour Party two and the Alliance Party one.  Vote shares were 30.6% DUP, 22.8% Sinn Fein, 16.8% Alliance and 14.9% SDLP.  So the Alliance got only one seat on 17% vote.

5:57pm: Final Scotland results: SNP 48 of 59 seats (up 13), Tories six (down seven), Lib Dems four (no change), Labour one (down six).  Vote shares: SNP 45.0% (up 8.1%), Tories 25.1% (down 3.5%), Labour 18.6% (down 8.5%) and Lib Dems 9.5% (up 2.8%).

4:52pm: With 13 seats to go, the Tories have 355 seats, Labour 202, the SNP 48 and the Lib Dems ten.

4:33pm: Another ex-Tory gets pummelled

4:24pm Labour has got to 200 seats with 37 left for the whole UK.

4:20pm: With all 40 Welsh seats declared, Labour won 22 (down six), the Tories 14 (up six) and Plaid Cymru four (no change).  Vote shares were 40.9% Labour (down 8.0%) and 36.9% Tories (up 2.5%).

4:16pm: With 41 seats still to be declared, the Tories have passed the majority mark (326 seats), and are now up to 335 seats.

4:11pm: Another not-great tactical voting, with the Tories HOLDING Finchley with 44%, the Lib Dems second with 32% and Labour 3rd with 24%.

3:36pm Tories GAIN Kensington from Labour by just 0.3% because the Lib Dems took 21%.  Additional note: Some polls in this seat put the Lib Dems ahead of Labour, so tactical voting plans were confused.

3:22pm: Ex-Tory Dominic Grieve LOSES his seat to the Tories.

3:12pm: In Leave seats, Labour lost votes directly to the Tories and Brexit party.  In Remain seats, the Lib Dems often split part of the vote, and anyway there aren’t enough Remain seats in the UK.

3:09pm With 424 of 650 seats declared, the Tories have 220 (up 32), Labour 146 (down 44), the SNP 35 (up 12) and the Lib Dems seven (no change).  The Tories have a 42.6% to 33.5% lead over Labour with 10.7% for the Lib Dems.  On a matched seat basis, Labour is down 8.3%.

2:54pm: Lib Dems miss out in Wimbledon; Labour had too many votes.

2:52pm Socialist Laura Pidcock LOSES her seat

2:50pm: Jo Swinson LOSES her seat to the SNP

2:47pm: Boris Johnson easily HOLDS his seat.

2:46pm: Really UGLY result for Labour in Bassetlaw

2:41pm: Labour loses Tony Blair’s old seat of Sedgefield.

2:35pm: Corbyn easily holds Islington N, but has announced he will resign as Labour leader.

2:32pm: Lib Dems GAIN a seat from SNP in Scotland

2:29pm: Overall, with 281 of 650 seats declared, the Tories have 140 seats (up 25), Labour 104 (down 31), the SNP 20 (up seven) and the Lib Dems five (down one).  Labour’s vote is down 8.1%, with the Tory vote up 1.8%.

2:20pm: In Wales, Labour has lost five seats to the Tories after 27 of 40 declared.  Labour’s vote is down 9.6% with the Tories up 3.6% and Brexit taking 6.6%.

2:16pm Scottish results so far are SNP all 17 seats declared, with the Tories and Labour losing three seats each.

2:06pm: Here’s one that could have gone to a non-Tory with preferential voting.

1:59pm: With 175 of 650 seats in, Labour has lost a net 19 seats, the Tories are up 15 and the SNP up four.

1:45pm: Labour HOLD Hartlepool after Tories and Brexit party split the Leave vote.  I think Labour is doing better than they would under preferential voting.

1:41pm: A narrow Lib Dem HOLD vs the Tories

1:36pm: Labour HOLDS Canterbury, the seat where the original Lib Dem withdrew, only to be replaced by another Lib Dem.

1:29pm: After 96 of 650 seats, the BBC has Labour down 8.8% in the same seats from 2017, but only 1.6% has gone to the Conservatives.  Labour has lost eight net seats, with the Conservatives up six.

12:55pm: An against the run of play result: Labour GAIN Putney from Conservative; that’s a London seat.

12:51pm Labour suffers the humiliation of losing its deposit in Bracknell.

12:46pm Gateshead illustrates how bad it would be for Labour if not for the Brexit party standing in most seats it currently holds.

12:43pm: On the BBC’s results page, Labour’s vote is down 11.4% after 20 of 650 seats.  The only good news for Labour is that only 2.7% of that drop has gone to the Conservatives, with 5.5% going to the Brexit party.

12:33pm: Conservatives GAIN Darlington and Workington from Labour.

12:26pm Labour’s big problem with the Leave vote: although Leave only won the Brexit referendum by 52-48, it carried 64% of seats in Great Britain (ie excluding Northern Ireland).  The Leave vote was far more efficiently distributed than the Remain vote, which clustered in the big cities.

This implies that an explicitly pro-Remain Labour leader would not have performed any better than Corbyn.  This election is the realignment around Leave/Remain that was expected in 2017, but which Corbyn thwarted with his pro-Brexit positioning.

12:12pm: Almost a 10% swing from Labour to Con in Nuneaton gives Con a far bigger majority.

12:08pm Tory vote down 6% in S Shields, with Labour down 16%, thanks to an independent and Brexit party candidate.

12:01pm

11:27am: Direct swing of 5% from Labour to Con gives Con a much bigger majority in N Swindon.

11:16am: Sedgefield was Tony Blair’s old seat, so would be a huge triumph for the Conservatives.

10:36am: Conservatives GAIN Blyth Valley from Labour after 15% crash in Labour’s vote.  Additional note: And preferential voting wouldn’t have helped Labour given 8% for the Brexit party.

10:30am First result in, Labour HOLD, but with a 7% swing against.

10:21am: Normally we’d have some results by now, but close contests in former Labour strongholds have slowed down the count in those seats.

10:08am: Vote shares according to The Exit Poll

9:39am: Nate Silver

9:30am: Antony Green

9:03am: The Exit Poll has a big win for the Conservatives

7:55am: As well as the UK, there is an electoral development in Israel.  A new election has been called for March 2, 2020, after no government could be formed after the September election.  It will be the third Israeli election within a year.  Early polling suggests the left-leaning Blue & White is ahead of the right-wing Likud, but do not have enough allies to form a government.

4am (AEDT). Adrian Beaumont will be taking care of business on the live commentary front, but this here is your editor reporting in the small hours to kick off proceedings. If you’re a Crikey subscriber, you can you enjoy my election eve account of the campaign horse race here. Here is one last update of my poll tracker, which tells the same story as before: the Conservatives had already devoured the Brexit Party before the campaign began, while Labour’s cannibalising of the Liberal Democrats has been a slower process that has persisted through to the end of the campaign. With the addition of seven last polls, the final scores are Conservative 42.9% (+0.2% compared with the last run, +0.5% on the 2017 result), Labour 33.7% (steady and -6.3%) and Liberal Democrats 11.9% (-0.4% and +4.5%).

For your convenience, here is a repeat of Adrian’s timeline of how things are likely to unfold, Australian time.

9am: Polls close and The Exit Poll is released (intentional capitalisation). In the last three elections, The Exit Poll has given seat results which greatly disagreed with pre-election polls and expectations. In all three cases, The Exit Poll was far closer to the mark than pre-election polls. Only seat counts are given, not vote shares.

11am: According to this article about the 2017 election, only three of 650 declarations are expected by this time.

1pm-3pm: These two hours should be the heaviest for declarations.  Initial results will be biased to Labour as the Conservative heartland regional seats take longer to gather their votes. The key is to watch the changes in vote share, and whether seats are being gained or lost.

6pm: Only a few seats will not be declared by this time. Very close seats can take longer to declare owing to recounts. If there’s snow on the roads, results will be delayed.

490 comments on “British election live”

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  1. already “reports” are coming out about results – I’d love to know how they know. Not even exit poll is released yet.

    But whether its true or not – what I’m hearing:
    – tories struggling in London
    – labour hard up against it in the so called ‘red belt’ and will lose a heap of seats there.

    My thoughts about twitter excitement about high turnout and #youthQuake:

    – huge excitement about early morning queues and apparently high proportion of young in those queues – likely because a) bad weather was forecast for later and people simply want to get out early and b) tories are generally expected to vote after work

    – vast majority of queue reports from London/safe labour seats – even some evidence of low turnout in critical rural marginals (red belt)

    If, as seems likely, Boris gets a majority on the back of older, rural people abandoning labour, and in spite of youthquake and metropolitan UK overwhelmingly rejecting the tories – I fear this will just divide UK society even more.

  2. Just a warning about seeing the early voting as a good portent for Labor.

    In the Australian election, the large number of prepolls seems to have merely indicated that a lot of people had decided to vote for the LNP and just wanted to get it over and done with.

  3. Talk on twitter that its going bad for Boris Johnson in his own seat.

    His seat is UxbridgeAndSouthRuislip (or something) could be worth watching closely, might they do a Bennelong…

  5. Exit poll – ouch!

    Labour in for a drubbing. Sorry labour supporters but exit polls are freakily accurate.

    Game over, good night, its been fun.

  6. The exit poll suggest exactly as I said…. a terrible result for Labour as Corbyn was a waste of skin. The membership of Labour must have rocks in their heads or they enjoy being in opposition.

  11. Geez how bad is that exit poll…. Lab net loss of 70 seats. What an absolute disaster if true. Tories 370 seats despite SNP cleaning up in Scotland.

    Breakup of the UK coming.

    Horrific performance from Corbyn and Swinson. Absolute Boris jubilatory victory lap.

    V unlikely its going to be 50 seats off.

    Pretty much worst nightmare. Decision to support this election shows what naive idiots Corbyn and his leadership are

  18. But But But

    Jeremy Corbyn is a modern election campaigning machine.

    Nicholas told us. Repeatedly. It must be the fault of the Murdoch press and the evil enemy within – despicable centrists. Forward the Purge!

  21. Tory chairman’s comments on Sky:
    Labour saying one thing to the inner urbs and another thing in the North
    (Sound familiar?)

  22. Personally I don’t mind if the UK get us style healthcare and the hardest of all brexits, tiny chance it would wake up some Aussies and we won’t vote so stupidly in three years time, assuming we get elections then.

  23. Not just Scotland heading for independence but with the likely form of brexit coming, can see n ireland heading towards reunification too.

    For crying out loud can this cataclysmic Corbyn/McDonnel/Abbott disaster experiment end now. They take as much responsibility for the consequences of Brexit as the Tories.

    Theresa May’s deal looking really good around now. Oppo rolled the dice that they could soften/reverse and now usher in a far far worse result.

    I feel sick

  25. The size of that majority will mean that BoJo gets to do Brexit and will probably be able to pass whatever legalisation he needs – hardcore backbenchers who want a no-deal or minimum deal will not be able to block it.

  26. this cataclysmic Corbyn

    I’ve astounded how many people who are supposed to be intelligent progressives have worked so hard for Murdoch and the very most vile parts of the Israeli lobby to work against Corbyn, they deserve the most misery if Boris has his exit poll indicated win.

  27. If the exit polls are right, the bloodbath will be in UK Labour after the election. It won’t be pretty, Momentum will go ballistic.

    As for those who will blame the media – that’s fine, but the left will need to find a way to win elections. We won’t get a chance to do anything about the bias from opposition.

  28. I presume that if the exit poll is a true representation of what happened, then the “Red Wall” has fallen and “Workington Man” has voted in support of his betters.

  29. Will be interesting to see how good the exit poll methodology has been. They seem to do this better in the UK than elsewhere but in this election it will be critical where and how they have deployed their polling resources and whether the data comes from live interviews, phones or online.

  31. Ante Meridian

    “I think it’s a bit early to talk of pasokification based on an election so clearly dominated by a single issue.“
    —————
    The single issue is “nationalism”. The Tories have assumed the UKIP/Farage mantle of English nationalism. While the SNP bears the mantle of Scottish nationalism.

    The former being a right-wing isolationist nationalism while the latter is a more left wing civic, inclusive and expansive nationalism.

  32. OC,

    I’m not sure we can equate austerity measures with Brexit. The first can be seen as a betrayal of principle, the second is just a very divisive issue. I think we’ll have to wait for another election or two to be sure.

  33. I look forward to all the mea culpas from the previous two UK Election threads. There are many who must enjoy crow.

    Apart from getting BREXIT done they need to repeal the stupid elections act that stopped the government from calling an Election.

  34. I doubt Scotland will leave. The polling I’ve seen shows only a small move towards Independence from the 55-45 result last time. But where to now for Labour in the UK? It seems the party membership has been captured by hard left activists who have driven working-class English into the arms of the right with their loony policies. Is there a mechanism to get rid of these people so that Labour can be reformed and becomes electable again? Is a new party needed? Can the Lib Dems be built up into a progressive centrist party with appeal to the working class? Or will the UK end up like Japan, with perpetual right-wing rule? I don’t like 5-year terms, it’s too long, but at least there is lots of time now to sort out the mess on the centre-left in the UK.

  35. Another good outcome is the slimey Lib Dems have had a disaster.

    If the 55 is accurate, it will be exciting to see how the “Democratic” Unionists share the four seats 🙂

  37. Yes, the UK will be the Japan of the North Atlantic…. and not in good way…. especially after Brexit… it will be myopic, xenophobic, rich but going nowhere with an economy that is going to be sluggish for decades….

  38. Parramatta Moderate says:
    Friday, December 13, 2019 at 9:25 am
    I doubt Scotland will leave. The polling I’ve seen shows only a small move towards Independence from the 55-45 result last time. But where to now for Labour in the UK? It seems the party membership has been captured by hard left activists who have driven working-class English into the arms of the right with their loony policies. Is there a mechanism to get rid of these people so that Labour can be reformed and becomes electable again? Is a new party needed? Can the Lib Dems be built up into a progressive centrist party with appeal to the working class? Or will the UK end up like Japan, with perpetual right-wing rule? I don’t like 5-year terms, it’s too long, but at least there is lots of time now to sort out the mess on the centre-left in the UK.
    —————-
    Wow, i reckon you should stick to commenting on Parramatta Council elections.

    I suspect the Moderate” is what your lot calls “fake news”

  40. The Blairites and Conservatives worked very effectively and deserve their win.

    Labour should be wound up and a social dem party established.

  41. Sigh. I really like Corbyn’s sincerity but if you do not offer voters a clear alternative on the issue of the day what do you expect? Corbyn never really opposed Brexit, just how Boris handled it, because Corbyn wanted Brexit too. So now the Blonde Bombast will be PM for a while.

    In England, as in Australia, Labour needs to rebuild, and get real about an alternative that appeals to young people, not only those over 50. A policy fighting climate change wouldn’t hurt either.

    In the soon to be independent nation of Scotland, they correctly realise they are better off getting out of this trainwreck. Who can blame them?

  42. Clearly the child being put on the hospital floor by its mother and Boris not doing the AF Neil Interview drove voters into Labour’s arms. Apparently.

  43. Socrates- the polling does not show a Scottish Independence Referendum would win and they won’t get a vote because they have just had one.

  44. Doesn’t matter how bad the government is, if you serve up ‘leaders’ of the calibre of Corbyn and Shorten, even against buffoons like Johnson and Morrison, you will lose.
    Labour need to purge themselves of the momentum cancer that the Corbynistas have been growing.

  45. One lesson that seems apparent from the British Election outcome is that screaming tantrums and abuse on twitter and other social media by the left mean sfa to the mainstream sensible centre when casting their votes..

  46. Is this the Corbynsaster

    Really his policies belongs in the 1800, A Labour MEP Seb Dance said while they loath Boris, most Britons are terrified of one thing more: Corbyn.

  47. Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson looks set to lose her seat, according to the exit poll, as her party faces a dismal showing in the general election.

  48. Really his policies belongs in the 1800, A Labour MEP Seb Dance said while they loath Boris, most Britons are terrified of one thing more: Corbyn.

    Then they they will have nothing to complain of if they, or their loved ones, die of hunger in a filthy emergency department at a hospital they can’t afford treatment at.

    of the three failing democracies infected with Murdoch this puts the UK firmly on top of the ‘so stupid this is what they deserve and why they can’t (and will not) have nice things’.

    The US can regain the mantle in 2020 with a second Trump term but a democratic controlled house and senate.

  50. WeWantPaul @ #48 Friday, December 13th, 2019 – 9:44 am

    Really his policies belongs in the 1800, A Labour MEP Seb Dance said while they loath Boris, most Britons are terrified of one thing more: Corbyn.

    Then they they will have nothing to complain of if they, or their loved ones, die of hunger in a filthy emergency department at a hospital they can’t afford treatment at.

    of the three failing democracies infected with Murdoch this puts the UK firmly on top of the ‘so stupid this is what they deserve and why the can’t (and will not) have nice things’.

    The US can regain the mantle in 2020 with a second Trump term but a democratic controlled house and senate.

    I think the voters have sad “Boo!” to that sort of scary rhetoric.

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