BBC exit poll predicts 307 Tory-255 Labour-59 LibDem-29 Others. Cameron would be short by 19. However, they think this exit poll is suspect, b/c it would mean that the LibDems would lose 3 seats compared to five years ago, which of course is unlikely, thanks to the performance of Nick Clegg. (Don’t forget, according to exit polls, John F’n Kerry won PA over Bush by 15 points in 2004.) Also they don’t stipulate if they think the BNP will be one of the “other” seat-takers.
My semi-realistic dream scenario is that the Tories fall short of a majority, but the BNP win enough seats to make the difference.
4:17 PM: If this exit poll is true to reality, then Labour+LibDem < 326, so they won’t be able to form a coalition to keep Gordon Clown in power.
5:30 PM: BNP’s candidate in the yellow dog Labour constituency of Washington shows a +5 swing over five years ago. The cons. had an overall 11% swing from Lab to Tory.
6:48 PM: The woman who is the sitting Labour MP from Barking, the one Nick Griffin is running in? She’s a real bitch. I swear, if “fascist” wasn’t in the dictionary, she would have nothing to say. Then again, Miss Hodge might think she has to bash Griffin and the BNP, because she may have accidentally given them a lot of legitimacy a few years ago. The BNP controls a lot of local offices within that constituency, and the CW states that her mouth is the reason why. Hey, if the shoe fits…
7:04 PM: BBC just speculated that Cameron could govern as a minority PM without the Tories flipping one seat in Labour-friendly Scotland. I wonder if this might hasten the effort for Scottish independence.
7:28 PM: Ditto for Wales.
7:58 PM: In the yellow dog Labour constituency of Gedling, Labour lost 6 points, half of which went to the BNP.
8:08 PM: To the extent that the Tories gain, it will be all in England. In fact, their biggest gains seem to be coming in yellow dog Labour districts in England, where it doesn’t make a difference in the actual result, b/c winner takes all (“first past the post.”) In competitive districts, the swing from Labour to Tory doesn’t seem to be as big, which might well boink the chances for David Cameron to win outright.
8:18 PM: The conservatives are successfully defending swing districts in places where the LibDems put a lot of time and money in. This hurts chances of a Labour+LibDem coalition, even if the Tories don’t get to 326.
8:25 PM: The Tories have flipped a couple of seats in Wales, one from Lab and one from LD.
9:49 PM: Rochdale, the constituency where the “bigoted woman” lives, did vote Labour, but Lab+LD went down 11, with the Tories up 8. A party called “National Front,” which did not get any votes five years ago, got almost 5% of the vote in that district.
9:58 PM: Jackass Straw, who has been both Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary under the Labour administrations of both Blair and Brown, was re-elected to his MP seat. Straw first came onto my radar when he, as Foreign Secretary at the time, tore into Jean Marie LePen after he made the runoff in the 2001 French Presidential elections.
10:03 PM: Tories hold Stratford-on-Avon. I wonder how ole Willie S. voted.
10:18 PM: Tories hold a constituency called Presli Pembrokeshire. Sounds like something that could come down with a case of the mange.
10:36 PM: Jacqui Smith, the Home Sec. who banned Michael Savage, got bounced out of her Redditch constituency. She’s the biggest Brown administration scalp to have been taken down.
10:40 PM: While the BNP candidate in Dewsbury got 6% of the vote, that is a 5 point drop from five years ago. The Tories flipped the district from Labour.
10:43 PM: There’s a constituency called Tooting. LOL.
10:45 PM: BNP goes from nothing to 3.2% in Pudsey.
10:46 PM: Cons hold Wimbledon. They have to be “loving” that. Also, they flipped a district called Northampton North. Isn’t that kinda redundant? At this time, a lot of London constituencies have yet to report. I expect Labour to make up some of its deficit once they do.
10:52 PM: Ed Balls ekes out re-election from Morley-Outwood, in spite of a big Tory swing. I guess, in this case, it was balls out time for him. BNP takes 7.2% here.
11:18 PM: BNP goes from nothing to 3% in Birmingham-Edgbaston, a college constituency.
11:28 PM: Labour defends Hammersmith, beating back a challenge by a black Tory candidate. David Cameron has to be crying in his ale.
11:32 PM: Black Tory in Chippenham loses, too. Looks like Cameron hasn’t found Britain’s Obama.
11:49 PM: Time to hit the hay. It looks like a hung Parliament. Cameron can probably string together enough members of the smaller parties, esp. those from Northern Ireland, to attain an administration. BNP has tripled its popular vote percentage from five years ago, but with no seats.
MAY 7
3:50 PM: There is only one district unaccounted for, and its election will be held in several weeks due to a tragic death of a candidate. However, it is a yellow dog Tory district, so assuming it stays in Tory hands, which seems to be a safe bet thanks to the solid Tory swing of last night, the next Parliament will have 307 T, 256 Lab, 57 LD and 28 others. The chances of a Lib+Lab coalition are slim, because that sum is <326. Even if you add in enough sympathist MPs to those parties from Scotland and Northern Ireland, it’s still not enough, and the politics of coalitions are always tricky, and always necessitate throwing CW out the window. My best bet for a coalition is an ad hoc between all the Tories and many of the others, plus a few Labs and Libs who agree with Cameron on the occasional issue, thereby making David Cameron the next PM. However, as the BBC pointed out last night, minority administrations never last that long. With this economy, I think we’ll see another election before the end of 2011.
The BNP didn’t win a seat, and in fact, their best chance, Barking and Nick Griffin, turned out slightly less well than in 2005, proving that every dog does not have his day. (Rimshot) However, in the UK as a whole, the BNP’s percent went up from 0.7 to 1.9, in England from 0.8 to 2.1, and in Wales from 0.1 to 1.6, this year compared to five years ago. It was not expected to do anything in Labour-happy Scotland, or in NI, where the parties are all different, though from what I understand, a vote for Sinn Fein (which wants NI reunited with Ireland) is essentially a vote for Labour, while a vote for the Unionists (who want to keep NI in in the UK) is essentially a vote for the Tories. It may not be much, but it’s a lot better than last time. And give the economy more time to rot, let there be news of even more horrific non-white-on-white murders, and the immigration floodgates staying open (which they will — Even if Cameron weren’t for open borders, any deal he would have to make with the Libs or Labs means that immigration enforcement gets scrapped) and things could be even better for the BNP in an election held before the end of next year.
The Conservatives’ most striking gains, in terms of percentage shift and in seats flipped, seems to be in the parts of England that are both north of London and away from the central cores of Birmingham and Manchester. South of London seemed to have been LibDem’s stronghold, but the Tories were able to make some swings their way, which hurt the LDs chances. AMAF, the LDs lost seats.
5:17 PM: George Galloway lost his seat. His consolation prize is a free trip to Palestine to help suicide bombers blow up buses full of Jewish children.
The latest gossip on a deal is Tory+some LDs, with the Tories making concessions in the areas of taxes, education, climate change (100% proven lie, U. of East Anglia) and election reform, with the LDs ceding to the Tories on immigration and missile defense. Of course, Cameron’s immigration plans are nothing to write home about anyway, so the LDs really aren’t giving up anything.
6:44 PM: The old saying goes — If you don’t have a dog in the race, why go to the track? The reason the BNP did a hell of a lot better a year ago in the MEP elections is that they use a system that rewards smaller parties, called the D’Hondt Method. One good thing that might come of a Tory+LD coalition is that Nick Clegg and the LDs, for very obvious reasons, want to change the UK’s MP elections to something more like the D’Hondt system than the current winner-take-all system. Cameron looks like he’ll cede to the LDs on election reform to form a coalition. I’m sure a lot of BNP types that voted a year ago didn’t bother this year because the system is stacked against them. If electoral reform happens soon, the economy gets worse, immigration gets worse, and hate crimes against whites get worse, and there are new elections before the end of next year, the BNP will do a lot better.
MAY 8
3:23 PM: A 14-year old voted in the Wyre Preston North constituency in the northwest part of England. He voted LD in this yellow dog Tory constituency, so his vote didn’t make a difference. In passing, we find out that voters in Northern Ireland do have the show photo ID, but not voters in England, Scotland or Wales. I wonder why NI voters do; I bet it has something to do with all the terrorism there in the recent past. Or maybe they’re worried that Irish citizens might sneak into NI and vote Sinn Fein in order to re-unify NI wit Ireland. I don’t know.
MAY 9
* Nick Griffin’s official statement on the good, the bad and the ugly from Thursday. I wish someone would do an analysis of these results, to see how many seats the BNP would have won if the British Parliament used the Euro Parliament’s version of the D’Hondt Method.
* John Lott thinks that the second best party in the UK, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), cost the Tories a majority. If 16,000 votes are all that separated the Cons from an absolute majority in Parliament, then David Cameron is conceding way too much to Nick Clegg.
* But, Cameron deserved it, according to Peter Hitchens. The only thing in this rant with which I don’t agree is Hitchens’s insistence right off the bat not to vote BNP. If anything, his list of grievances against Cameron are precisely the reason to vote BNP, or at the very least, UKIP.
* I looked at the BBC’s breakdown by region of England, and the North East and Yorkshire & Humber are the regions where the BNP did the best, with 4.4% of the vote in both, which makes it the fourth most popular party in both regions. The North East’s 4.4% take was compared to 0.9% in 2005, which marks the BNP’s most dramatic regional gain. Of course, in the NE, Labour has 25 of the 29 seats.
MAY 12
* An enterprising reporter earned himself a knuckle sandwich when he discovered blatant voter fraud in eastern London constituencies. Of which Barking is one.
