Just two hours until the exit polls have their say, but if you can’t wait for that … Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com site has run through pretty much every poll result permutation to come up with a range of projections as to how the House of Commons will look on 7th May.
Here’s their official final projection, which shows the Lib Dems in second place by the slimmest of margins (but of course with half the number of Labour MPs) – and the Tories likely to end up running …
Paddy Ashdown speaking today about the importance of voting today for the Lib Dems if you want to change the country:
You have until 9.55 pm this evening, Thursday 6th May, to make your predictions about the outcome of today’s general election.
All you have to do is offer up your best guesses for the following four questions:
2. How many Lib Dem MPs will be elected?
3. Who will be Prime Minister at 5pm on Friday, 7th May?
…
Rather odd behaviour by a Conservative teller in South West Surrey today who turned out to be very reluctant to admit they were telling on behalf of the Conservative Party, as the following video shows:
Over at The Guardian’s Comment is Free website, LDV Co-Editor Mark Pack, until last year working at the heart of Lib Dem HQ, picks out his ten must-watch seats to find out how the party is faring.
They range from northern seats where the main challenger is Labour (eg, Leeds North West and Durham) to southern seats where the tussle is with the Tories (eg, Eastleigh and Guildford). Scotland is represented by
Dunfermline and Fife West (2am)
Held after his byelection victory by Willie Rennie, this Scottish seat will throw light on not only how the Lib Dem-Labour battle in Scotland
…
It’s not just been the public making up its mind over the last 24 hours – a number of political bloggers have also declared who they’ll be voting for in the last day. Mostly, this is along party lines, as you might expect. But some have stood out from the crowd – here are three which have caught my eye …
Why this ex-Tory Boy is voting Liberal Democrat (Jack of Kent)
Until this election I have always voted Conservative. … By background I am a tribal Tory, from generations of Birmingham working class Tories and Tory-Unionists dating back to when
…
Okay, so the heady days of ‘Cleggmania’ – with the Lib Dems briefly in first place in the polls as high as 34% – did not last until election day itself.
Few of us expected it to, really, though it was delicious while it lasted. The fact that every single one of the nine final polls showed the Lib Dems in the 26-29% range, neck-and-neck with Labour, would have been beyond our wildest imaginations just one month ago.
But, still, there’s a percpetion in the media that the Lib Dems have somehow faded in the final week of the campaign …
Lib Dem Voice reported eight of the final day polls yesterday – there was just one last polling company, Ipsos MORI, due, and their figures have now been published by the London Evening Standard:
The average of these nine final polls is reported by the Standard as follows, with changes from 2005 in brackets:
There were apparently 91 polls published during the 2010 general election campaign, compared with 30 five years ago.
One of the most amazing – and welcome – aspects of this election campaign has been how Nick Clegg has completely stolen the show, as Jonathan Freedland noted in his Guardian article yesterday. But it’s not just at home that ‘Cleggmania’ has been in evidence: the foreign press in particular have been fascinated by his rise without trace.
Here, for example, is how a major feature in the New York Times begins:
LIVERPOOL, England — Chris Garlick arrived a skeptic, but departed a convert.
“I think he’s refreshing,” Mr. Garlick said of Nick Clegg, the earnest, fresh-faced leader of the newly
…
Over at The Guardian’s Comment is Free website, author and historian Timothy Garton Ash delivers a passionate call for public to ignore any thought of tactical voting, and vote Lib Dem today to compel the real change Britain needs. Here’s an excerpt:
This time, vote Liberal Democrat. Vote Liberal wherever you can. Vote Liberal as if your life depended on it. Vote Liberal if you want a transformed politics and a modern, free country with a realistic view of its place in the world. No matter if you didn’t last time; no matter if you won’t next time. This time: seize
…
The Westmoreland Gazette reports the good news for the very splendid Tim Farron’s re-election hopes:
TIM Farron’s campaign to retain Westmorland and Lonsdale has received an unlikely boost from his former Labour opponent in the 2005 General Election.
In an open letter to voters, John Reardon urged people not to support his old party but instead to cast their votes for the Liberal Democrats to ‘keep out the Conservatives’.
“I am writing to you asking you to support Tim and the Liberal Democrats at this election,” writes Mr Reardon.
“Labour cannot win in Westmorland, as I learned with only seven per cent of
…
A ‘virtual’ Good Morning leaflet arrived in Lib Dem members’ email inboxes this morning from Nick Clegg:
Dear Friend,
Today’s the day we can deliver fairness for Britain.
But we need your help today to make it happen.
I know we’ve all worked so hard in this campaign already. You might already be out and about delivering “Good Morning” leaflets. If so – thank you!
But votes don’t count until they’re in the ballot box.
Everything you can do today will make a huge difference. Every door you can knock on or leaflet you can deliver will be vital.
And don’t forget to vote yourself!
Thank
…
Not a good start to the day in Brent Central, where ballot papers for the wrong Parliamentary constituency had been supplied to all three polling stations Willesden Green ward. Result? Proper voting didn’t actually start until nearly two hours late.
UPDATE: Another problem, this time reported from York: polling cards issued which said polls were open 7am to 10am (i.e. for just three hours). Ooops:
A few key pieces of information for polling day:
…
Yes, folks, truly this is The Sun’s election day front page …
It is, to put it politely, woeful. Not only does it make the assumption that Sun readers will instantly recognise the Obama imagery – by no means a certainty – but it fails the crucial credibility test.
The famous Kinnock light-bulb front page of 1992 captured, cruelly but brilliantly, the nation’s last minute doubts that the Labour leader was prime ministerial. But is there anyone who really looks at David Cameron and thinks, “There’s our Obama”? No.
I was fully expecting a full-tilt Sun attack on either/both Clegg and/or Brown: as they showed 18 years ago, going negative can work. I guess I should be grateful that Murdoch’s rag has thrown away the opportunity to lash out at their opponents in a way which might inflict damage.
By drawing the ludicrously hyperbolic Obama/Cameron comparison, it does almost seem as if The Sun is over-compensating: this arty-farty front page invites derision. Indeed it’s already started …
Okay, well this is it – the final polls of the campaign are published tonight. Here’s what’s in so far:
…
Feet tired, aching, sore from so much delivery? Canvassed so much you’ve forgotten the candidate’s name (and you are the candidate)? Your home a tip, full of surplus leaflets and un-done housework?
In case you needed any further reason for keeping going til you drop for just one more day, here’s a reminder from polling firm ComRes’s Andrew Hawkins:
… some 38% of adults say that they may well change their mind before tomorrow. The party whose supporters are most fickle are the Lib Dems, making their impact especially hard to call.
Also of interest in this final poll is the
…
Lib Dem Voice will be providing as comprehensive as possible a results service on the night of 6th May, right through into Friday.
We’ll bring you the latest news, tweets, photos, reaction etc as soon as we have it, and for as long as we’re awake. You can also follow us on Twitter or via Facebook.
Our best source of information about how the Lib Dems are faring up and down the country will be you, our readers. Please let us have your latest titbits and tips no matter where you are in the UK.
You can contact us in …
With just over 12 hours until polls open, it’s time to launch the LDV election prediction competition to our readers: enough of the speculating it’s time to pin your colours to the mast. What do you think will happen in the 2010 general election on 6th May?
All you have to do to be crowned LDV’s 2010 soothsayer is give your answers to the following four questions:
2. How many Lib Dem MPs will be elected?
3. Who will be Prime Minister at
…
Michael Gove is a banana. I’m not being rude, he confessed as much this morning on Radio 4: “If that’s democracy then I am a banana”. This in reference to the potential for a Lib-Lab coalition brought about by our archaic first past the post system.
Well, he might not be a banana, but I should imagine that he would rather argue that he is, indeed, a particularly yellow type of fruit, than admit that our democracy is a sham, perpetuated only by a broken electoral system. For the Conservatives to admit that FPTP should be changed would be a disaster. …
Cross-posted from the International Business Times:
If I were one of the legions of undecided waverers up and down the country still making up my mind who to vote for I would feel just a little cheated by this election campaign.
For almost four weeks the politicians from all three major parties have argued and debated and discussed, but still none has answered the fundamental question: how is the UK going to cut the deficit over the course of the next parliament?
For sure, all have talked a good game. Lib Dems, Labour and Tories have all declared that their …
I don’t think even our most politically obsessed reader would be able to complain about the quantity of election coverage over the past month. Quality’s another issue, of course – and yes I am looking at you BBC1’s This Week, with your ridiculous Abbott and Portillo pantomime.
But there is one area where this election has found TV severely lacking: intelligent political comedy.
True, there’s Have I Got News For You, still (amazingly) fresh and funny after 21 years on screen. But such has been the pace of this election campaign, that its weekly appearances have nearly always been playing …
This election has shaken up many people’s conception of politics. For the time being, we as Lib Dems have succeeded in what we’ve always attempted to create – a political triangle of us, Labour and the Conservatives.
As my first election – and indeed my first opportunity to experience politics as an adult – it’s been an interesting campaign. But I’m not in my home territory of Accrington. I’m in western Wales, on the fringes of our island. I’m not fighting Red or Blue, because I’m fighting Green, or to put it another way, I’m fighting the Welsh Nationalists. And …
There’s a fascinating on-the-campaign-trail profile of Nick Clegg by Jonathan Freedland in today’s Guardian highlighting quite how extraordinary has been the Lib Dem leader’s breakthrough in the 2010 general election, completely outshining both Gordon Brown and David Cameron:
In little over three short weeks, Clegg has gone from a face barely recognised outside the Westminster village to a phenomenon. Where once his party had to beg for attention, he now has to fend off questions not just from a British press pack at last treating the Lib Dems with respect, but from CNN and a clutch of other foreign reporters, who
…
Dating back to times when unscrupulous campaigns issues fake poll cards directly people to the wrong places to vote, the law says:
No person shall for the purpose of promoting or procuring the election of any candidate at a parliamentary election issue any poll card or document so closely resembling an official poll card as to be calculated to deceive (1983 Representation of the People Act)
Although the original motivation for that legislation is now long in the past, it’s still the law in force – and so the law campaigns have to follow. As The Times has pointed out, using …
High opinion poll ratings are enjoyable to see.
Big turnouts at meetings can give you a real buzz.
New offers of help can warm the heart.
But what really matters is voters and seats. You certainly don’t have to hold elected office to make a difference in your community, but the possibilities that come with winning elections provide so many routes to change your local community and our country.
For all the fun of the last four weeks, it’s the election results that roll out tomorrow night and Friday morning which will really shape the future of our government and our political system.
They’ll determine …
Over at ShortList.com, there’s an interview with Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable, which notes that his winning appearance on Channel 4’s Ask the Chancellors helped start the Lib Dems’ 2010 election bandwagon. Here are just a couple of the questions asked and answers given:
So, did you enjoy the first chancellors’ debate?
I didn’t enjoy it – that’s not the word I’d use. I felt increasingly confident as it went on. I felt I had the right arguments and the audience was on my side. It is quite tricky, trying to concentrate on the other two and what they’re saying and
…
The ballot boxes are being put in place, the polling stations are being prepared, and voting starts in less than 24 hours. But this election is still wide open. We have before us the most incredible opportunity to transform our country for the better and to put fairness back into our society.
So in these last few hours, let me say to everyone who has felt that sense of excitement in the last few weeks at the idea that real change might be possible: we have to turn excitement into votes. Change is coming, but only if you choose it.
Change has …
Labour embarked on an odd campaigning trick yesterday. Two of Labour’s most senior (and tribally partisan) figures – Ed Balls and Peter Hain – called publicly on Labour voters to lend their support to the Lib Dems in those seats where the choice is Lib Dem or Tory. It’s inconceible that Ed Balls in particular would do so without the explicit consent of Gordon Brown.
In public Gordon Brown makes the case for a “maximum Labour vote” – how could he do otherwise as party leader? Yet the mixed signals will have given their cue to many Labour …
I’ve just finished a great day campaigning in Liverpool, Glasgow and London. Everywhere I go, and especially in our key seats, it is obvious our support is growing by the day.
Volunteers are walking in off the streets to offer to deliver leaflets, knock on doors and make phone calls – doing their bit to make change happen.
Experienced campaigners across the country are telling me this is an election like never before for our party. The old rules have been torn up and we are rewriting the election script.
Everybody
…
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Keep the earnings link: don’t repeat the mistakes of the 80s (Chris Perry)
Where have we heard this one before? Labour and electoral reform (Jack Meredith)
A national care service – questions for Burnham (and us) (Ruth Bright)
Opportunity at the heart of our vision in local government (Callum Robertson)
Vince Cable writes: Drill, baby, drill…or not (Vince Cable)
Peer says his name should not be used in legal letter in island cafe dog snub row
A fair pension for every generation: a Liberal Democrat case for reform
So many questions over Burnham's agenda
The disturbing folklore behind Alan Garner's stories
The Burnhamites will not hurt them for they are tough as leather
The geography of Liberal Democrat potential (LDN#214)
The sun still shines on PM Burnham
The Joy of Six 1584
Vampire Weekend: Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
Suzanne Fletcher 
Paul Barbour 
Ruth Bright 
David Allen 
Peter Davies 
