I'd like to believe it's the Iraq War that's cost Labour in these elections

[ciphergoth]

...but if that's so, why have the gains been in favour of the fucking Tories?

(Feeling rather ill and snuffly. But looking forward to seeing folks tonight!)

Comments

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

First a note on the what. The gains in seats are relatively evenly split between the Tories and Lib Dems. This hides a lot more "churn" in the Lib Dem seats -- losses in the South offset by gains in the North still giving an overall rise. The figures on gains and losses of councils look a lot worse than they seem when you look behind the figures (eg the Lib Dems lost Cheltenham but lost just 2 seats when they'd had a majority of one; contrast with places like Cardiff).

The how? Partly cos in the South the Tories are still taking back seats from the Lib Dems that they lost in the days when no-one would publicly admit to voting Tory. Partly cos the Tories put up more candidates nationwide than the Lib Dems did. Partly cos press-wise and money-wise the Tories still get way, way, way more attention. Partly cos the Lib Dem gains were in urban areas where there are many more voters per council seat, so a big popular swing translates into fewer gains.

And partly the maths of first past the post seats with more than 2 parties: if a seat was Lab 45 / Con 35 / LDm 15 / Others 5, and 15% of the Lab vote slumps to the Lib Dem, the Tory gets in by 5%.