Author Archives: Ed Moisson

Ed Moisson

Glass looks half full to me

By Ed Moisson | Sat 21st December 2019 - 2:29 pm

Trawling through the general election results, I see that the Liberal Democrats finished second in 91 seats.

Disappointed they didn’t finish first in all of these? Of course. Disappointed they didn’t finish first in even 10 of these? Yes, that too.

But the disappointment should be set in relation to the progress the party has made since 2015 and not just compared to expectations from earlier in the summer this year. For this, I’ve been crunching some numbers to see how Liberal Democrats have fared over recent general elections.

Following the 2015 election, there was a general expectation that it would take many years for the party to recover. That’s still the case. Remember, in 2015 the Lib Dems came fourth or worse in 524 seats. And in 185 of these seats the Lib Dems actually finished fifth, sixth or seventh.

So the party could potentially claim a respectable result in barely 100 seats across the UK four years ago. By contrast, in the 2019 election the party finished in the top three in 443 seats.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 56 Comments
Ed Moisson

Tracking voters in 2010 and 2015

By Ed Moisson | Sun 27th September 2015 - 10:04 am

 

If anyone is still interested in mulling over the results of the General Election, this is some analysis that helps to answer two questions: which parties did 2010 voters choose in 2015? And the subtly different question: who had 2015 voters chosen in 2010? I am looking at the proportion of each party’s total vote in each case. (Thanks to David Howarth for pointing me towards the underlying data, following my previous column on this topic).

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 5 Comments
Ed Moisson

Opinion: General election 2015 – The rise of UKIP and the Tory decapitation strategy

By Ed Moisson | Thu 2nd July 2015 - 9:16 am

Looking across the change in vote share at the General Election (analysing data from here) reveals that the Liberal Democrat vote was down 15.3 percentage points (pps) on average, but down slightly more in constituencies where the Lib Dems won in 2010 (15.7 pps). Excluding Scotland from these latter figures shows the Libs Dems were down by 16.8 percentage points.

The biggest winner was UKIP, both in England and Wales (up 10.9 pps) and in former Lib Dem constituencies (up 7.6 pps). The Liberal Democrats need to understand why so many previous voters switched to UKIP.

The Conservatives were up 1.1 pps overall, but actually down 0.5 pps in Lib Dem seats. However, in England and Wales this turns into a gain, albeit just 0.7 pps and again lower than their overall improvement. The Conservatives gained most ground against the Lib Dems in the South West, up 3.8 pps overall, and up 4.3 pps in seats the Lib Dems had previously won.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 30 Comments
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