Galloway is out at West Bradford, or so it is claimed - a rare Labour gain, if true - but the talk is now of a Labour leadership contest. Miliband
Castle Point, slated as number three on Ukip's list of winnable seats â and the place picked by Farage to launch the Ukip manifesto â has been retained by the Conservatives. Rebecca Harris actually increases her vote to 23,112 (up from 19,806 in 2010), on a reduced turnout, down to 66 percent â a drop of 0.9 percent.
In 2010, Bob Spink stood as an independent, taking 12,174 votes. Add 2,205 votes to BNP and, arguable, that is the transfer to Ukip's Jamie Huntman, who polls 14,178. Labour more or less holds up its vote, with 6,283 (6,609), while the Lib-Dems are massacred, plummeting from 4,232 to a pathetic 80 ⦠yes, 80 votes.
of taking the seat, with the Conservatives ahead by just a point, according to an Ashcroft poll. This is also a seat that great sage, Iain Dale,
might go to Ukip. Responding to the news of a Tory "hold", Diane James, Ukip MEP, says this is "disappointing".
Douglas Alexander loses Paisley and Renfrewshire to the SNP and Marie Black, a 20-year-old student - the youngest MP since forever. The swing is 34 percent. In Falkirk, the swing is 24 percent. SNP is on track to become the UK's third biggest party.
Strong and persistent rumours (and claims) that Farage is running behind the Conservatives at Thanet South. He
in a bad-tempered interview with ITN. Meanwhile, as the results trickle in, the exit poll looks more and more secure, while we remind ourselves
and last November ...
UPDATE: 01:09 Hrs:North Swindon has given us the fourth result, and a Conservative win in a fairly safe seat, with a seven thousand majority last time. But here again, we see the same pattern that was established in the Sunderland seats where the incumbent increases the vote. Thus, we see Justin Tomlinson increasing his vote to 26,295 (from 22,408).
Labour, as second runner drops to 14,509 votes (from 15,348) and the Lib-Dems collapse, pulling in a mere 1,704 votes (from 8,668). Ukip pulls in 8,011 votes, up from 1,842 (or a combined Ukip-BNP total of 3,384). Once again, turnout barely moves, standing at 64.5 percent from 64.2. Again, if the People's Army is on the move, there is no sign of it in North Swindon.
UPDATE 23:58 Hrs: We're getting exactly the same picture with Washington and Sunderland West. Once again, Labour increases its vote to 20,478 (from 19,615), Ukip takes 7,321 (1,267), the Conservatives are down to 7,033 (1,267) and the Lib-Dems collapse to 993 (7,191). Turnout here is also low. Only 54.6 percent of the electorate votes, up marginally from 53.2. This means that 70 percent of the electorate did not vote for the winning candidate.
UPDATE 23:38 Hrs: The two Sunderland results are interesting. In Houghton & Sunderland South, Labour won the seat with 21,218, up from 19,137 in 2010. The Conservative candidate lost some ground, taking 7,105 votes â down from 8,147 in 2010. Ukip is way up, increasing from 1,022 to 8,280. But this does not look quite so dramatic if we add last election's BNP vote, which brought the combined total to just short of 3,000.
The news of the moment, though, is the collapse of the Lib-Dem vote. This time, they have taken a mere 791 votes, losing their deposit. Last time, they got 5,292 votes.
In Sunderland Central, again Labour gets more votes - 20,959 as against 19,495 votes in 2010. The Conservatives lose nearly three thousand votes, down from 12,770 to 9,780. Ukip again is up, soaring to 7,997 from 1,094 in 2010. And again, the combined BNP-Ukip vote was about 3,000. The Lib-Dems collapse, getting 1,105 as against 7,191 in 2010.
The turnouts are relatively low (against reports of high turnovers elsewhere). In Houghton & Sunderland South, it stands at 56.3 percent compared with 55.3 percent in 2010. In Sunderland Central, the turnout is static, as 57 percent. There is no indication that either campaign has enthused any great tranche of new voters, and no evidence to indicate that Ukip is pulling votes away from Labour.
UPDATE 23:01 Hrs: "It's fair to say no one was expecting that", says Jonathan Freedland in the
Guardian, "not the political parties, not the punditocracy and â least of all â the pollsters".
And there is the typical arrogance of the legacy media. On 21 March,
we said: "My 'gut feeling' is that the 'Miliband effect' will create a last minute surge towards the Conservatives, with the two-party squeeze pushing Ukip out of the picture, leaving Cameron with a small but workable majority".
Of course, to the legacy media, we don't exist. We're "no one" â we don't count. But, checking up on our own posts, we've been talking about the possibility of a two-party squeeze since forever, writing in
September 2012 that, "The next election is shaping up to be a Tory-Labour contest and, if the result looks close, the other parties won't get a look in".
The thing is, political dynamics tend to be unchanging â more biology than politics. If things look close, the "squeeze" takes effect. That's the way things work.
UPDATE 22:08 Hrs: Exit poll gives us the following projected seats - Conservatives 316; Labour 239; SNP 58; Lib-Dem 10; PC 4; Green 2; Ukip 2; Other 19. The exit poll last year was stunningly accurate, so it looks as if the pundits might have got it wrong. The "gut feeling" has it so far - we might be on our way to a referendum.
Gloat mode - on (partial). Kellner, one should be reminded, suggested that the Conservatives would get 284 seats.
UPDATE 19:43 Hrs: a final Populus poll (via
Reuters) has Conservatives and Labour tied on 33 percent. Lib-Dems get 10 percent, Ukip 14 and the Greens five. The pundits are reporting a modest swing to Labour, with it edging ahead in the very latest polls.
Last election - the BBC/ITN exit poll from NOP/Mori suggested a hung parliament. Cons 307 (short 19 of a majority), Lab 255, Lib-Dems 59 (down 3) and others on 29. Kellner's prediction, therefore (see previous post) would have it that the Conservatives are doing worse this time round - they actually took 306 seats.
And just a reminder: more than 9,000 council seats (9,243 to be exact) are being contested in 279 English local authorities. There are also mayoral elections in Bedford, Copeland, Leicester, Mansfield, Middlesbrough and Torbay. in the nationals, we have 650 seats contested: 533 in England; 59 in Scotland; 40 in Wales and 18 in Northern Ireland
The latest
Guardian/ICM poll (graphic above) also effectively has Labour and the Conservatives neck-and-neck. Ukip makes third place with 11 percent. That, then, is the prediction to beat (for the moment), the narrative firmly fixed on a hung parliament.
On his own blog,
Complete Bastard is favouring a Conservative majority, and he's not on his own.
White Wednesday reminds us of a piece from the
Mail on 2 May, which also has the Tories ahead on 291 seats to Labour's 265.
Picking up from what
Complete Bastard has written, though â whether Mr Cameron is able to form a majority government or not, we should make this election the turning point for Euroscepticism. The movement has stalled intellectually, and we're hearing the some of the same arguments that were being trotted out in 1975 â and they're about as unconvincing now as they were then.