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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  3. “Does a point arrive where the real left works itself blue?”

    ***

    Looks like the fake left has already arrived at that point…

  4. Firefox
    Johnson will try and claim its a big win but its really only the labour areas swinging to him while everywhere else is swinging against the conservatives, its a strong win but a majority built on another party’s heartland can’t be seen as too solid.

  8. There is certainly no polling evidence to suggest a second Scottish independence referendum would succeed. Of the last 52 polls on the question, since March 2017, just one has independence leading.

  11. Scotland is not going to get independence unless Westminster agrees to it and that is as likely as Corbyn comeback at this stage. The Scots can elect as many independence candidates as they like but BoJo is not going to hold another referendum in a hurry.

    As for Northern Ireland, the DUP have been stubborn on their leader in the local assembly so it has been under direct rule for the past two years. The Northern Irish on both sides of the divide are going to be ones most hurt by Brexit too, yet DUP didn’t manage to do anything to prevent it or deal with it.

  13. I see that some folks think that the obvious solution for Labor is to lunge further to the left.

    That might work.

    But I doubt it.

  18. The scottish pattern continues, with the SNP gaining another two seats, one each from Labour and Conservative. Scotland is all yellow, so far.

    Which kinda makes me wonder about the point of voting for a party whose sole purpose is independence, if you’re not going to vote for independence.

  19. B S Fairman (irony)

    Scotland is not going to get independence unless Westminster agrees to it and that is as likely as Corbyn comeback at this stage. The Scots can elect as many independence candidates as they like but BoJo is not going to hold another referendum in a hurry.
    ———-
    Haha

    There’s always a fascist UKIP thug around to remind you how Westminster is the fount of democracy 🙂

  20. Ante Meridian @ #218 Friday, December 13th, 2019 – 2:16 pm

    The scottish pattern continues, with the SNP gaining another two seats, one each from Labour and Conservative. Scotland is all yellow, so far.

    Which kinda makes me wonder about the point of voting for a party whose sole purpose is independence, if you’re not going to vote for independence.

    Don’t worry about it. We’re in Chinatown!

  22. Swamprat –
    How do you think the Scots are going to get Independence then? Revolution? They have to get the government in London to agree and I can’t see that happening. The Scottish general assembly can bitch and moan but it can not declare independence.

  25. Well they might have to hurry about if they are planning on leaving. The freedom of movement to the EU will go with Brexit. 🙂

  27. Corbyn has just announced he won’t contest another election as Labour leader. He is remaining as leader for now. He is staying on as a member after winning his own seat for the 10th time in a row.

  29. Scotland has a Parliament more democratically elected than the travesty on the bank of the Thames.

    Well we will see. A Parliament cannot govern without the consent of the people.

    The Empire normally runs when the natives get too restless.

  36. Good grief. The SNP loses a seat. In Fife North East the votes of Conservative and Labour both go through the floor, with LIbDem benefiting slightly more than SNP, just enough to pinch it.

  38. Interesting, maybe a case of tactical voting.

    In Fife N E the SNP vote went up over 7% but the tory vote droped by 11% and the LD vote went up 10% taking the seat by a fraction from the SNP.

    SNP 24 up 8. Tories 1 minus 5. LDP 1 Lab 0

  40. So I guess Ed Davey is now the leader of the Lib-Dems by default? He’s not much of a choice but it is not like they have a lot of people to choose from.

  42. Bucephalus

    I’ll missing seeing Swinson on the TV.
    ———-
    I can assure most of Scotland will be relieved not to have to listen to her again.

  44. Boris wins his own seat comfortably despite all the negative media about possibly losing his seat his personal life and all the resources of Labour and Lib Dems being thrown at him.

    HUZZAH!

  45. Ante Meridian: Looking at those figures from North East Fife it looks like the LDP was likely the Condorcet winner last time anyway.

  48. Mexicanbeemer

    Jo Swinson can do a Nicole Sturgeon and hang around without holding a Commons seat.
    ————
    Nicole Sturgeon is an elected MSP and First Minister of Scotland.

    She just demonstrated her campaigning ability in support of the Westminster Contingent. She isn’t “hanging around”.

    What were you saying about Jo Swinson’s political skills?

  50. So now both the Westminster leader of the right-wing DUP as well as the leader of the right-wing Lib Dems have both lost their seats. Both seats were won by parties of the left.

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