There you go. Our core voters are turning out and voting for someone else.
Now someone tell me, how long have I been warning that this would happen?
Friday, May 02, 2008
Most of Labour's damage from loss of core vote
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5 rants:
That's not necessarily true. If Labour had a steady 10% in one seat, that's surely a core/residual vote (assuming it's the same 10% each time). 'Core' is a characteristic of voters, not of areas, and reflects consistency of support over time (more than one year). If Labour went from 60% to 50% in a seat, wouldn't the lost supporters most likely be the least committed?
The answer is that we can't possibly say purely on the basis of statistics like these. We need to listen to what our past/present voters actually have to say.
What we are seeing, imho, is a mixture of factors. The rump of the parties vote (the 25% in the mid 80's, and pre-blair) - who stuck with "New Labour" out of habit/longing have decided to question even harder whether they see any semblence of the party they joined remaining.
People are also less stigmatised about calling themselves Tory after Diamond Daves succesful PR job.
The Liberal vote has hauled itself back up from the 11% last year in the polls to 25% at these locals.
The walls of party affiliation are also braking down - my last several votes for Labour candidates haven't been because they were Labour candidates - but were cast for the poeple standing as Labour candidates (if that makes sense)
Within the breakdown of affiliation and association comes the proliferation of elections based on lists and preferences = people are feeling freed to express themselves rather than how they would previously have expressed their orthodxies. Someone who used to be a solid Labour Voter - might still vote labour occasionally (for the right candidates) but also vote green, or a generic left-alternative (the LibDems, circa 2005 for example)
It's a long and difficult shakedown - the rump of which i will put at the door of successive New Labour policies that aid the middle classes and upper working classes over those at the very bottom.
Labour worked harder in London yesterday than i have seen for years - and it wasn't out of loyalty to the Party - it was the fear of God that Boris might win that motivated people. Just check recent facebook statuses about peoples motivations in and around london.
mentioning whats happening in Wales........ where there isn't a NEw Labour vote to collapse, there weren't floating voters to defect away - it was Labour. New Labour doesn't exist in Wales and had been fairly well isolated from the anti labour trends in recent years, but the coallition with Plaid and heavy heavy defeats today show that Labour as a whole is sullied - and that no one section of the party can claim universal truth.
"If Labour went from 60% to 50% in a seat, wouldn't the lost supporters most likely be the least committed?"
Or the most pissed off, depending on how you want to look at it. This of course depends on the material effect that policies actually have on people, as well as their perceptions.
"Within the breakdown of affiliation and association comes the proliferation of elections based on lists and preferences = people are feeling freed to express themselves rather than how they would previously have expressed their orthodxies. Someone who used to be a solid Labour Voter - might still vote labour occasionally (for the right candidates) but also vote green, or a generic left-alternative (the LibDems, circa 2005 for example)"
Yeah, hence the need to have some values with which to associate your party, I guess.
Not in Bench Hill. It was the middle class thinking they're voting for the class interest that lost us Northenden. The estates piled in (well let's say 20% up from 6% turnout) for Mike Kane. The village piled in for the muppet Lev Atkins.
Protest at the tax gaffe and fear at the housing crunch that may or may not happen were the key to this. Specific events. Overall the NL story has not been so bad as is now being painted.
Barring the war, the PFIs, the tax slips ... the rest is reasonably positive for the class interests. IMO. Not as good as it could and should be. But +ve.
"If Labour went from 60% to 50% in a seat, wouldn't the lost supporters most likely be the least committed?"
Well, it depends what they're committed to and what Labour is perceived as being committed to.
I'm unconvinced any issue other than the Iraq war has actually convinced large numbers of Labour voters to actively switch votes to the left in recent years (in the broadest possible sense of 'to the left').
As with the Tories in the late-90s, Labour's biggest problem is people who are nominally supporters being less motivated to vote than supporters of other parties.
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