UK General Election 2024: The Results & Aftermath

[Purple Train]

Perhaps 'Portillo moment' can be for when the losing MP acts with grace and dignity throughout the announcement, immediately congratulating his/her opponent and making a gracious speech in accordance with how things are normally done.

'Liz Truss' moment will be for when the losing MP delays going on stage and therefore holding up the announcement to the point of being slow-handclapped, then exits the stage without speaking, and generally acting like they have no respect for the process.

I think you're right, yes!

 

[Cowley]

Oh dear. Fell asleep in the end. Has anything happened?

 

[YorkshireBear]

What is interesting is that this huge rise in seats for Labour has come off the back of only a 1.7% increase in vote share.

 

[Silver Cobra]

Looks like the best the Conservatives can do now is 125 seats. They're on 119 right now with only 6 left to declare. I guess their failure to hit the predicted 131 is as a result of the Lib Dems, who have outperformed the predictions from the exit poll.

 

[edwin_m]

This is overwhelmingly a rejection of the Tories rather than a strong endorsement of Labour or any other party. Numbers of seats are out of all proportion to numbers of votes.

In view of that, I wonder if a magnanimous first action for Starmer should be to recognise this by announcing a commission on electoral reform, with a view to it becoming Labour policy at the next election. Labour membership has been strongly in favour, as have the LibDems historically, and perhaps now the Tories will be in favour too.

 

[Welly]

If the political parties are nappy brands, the Tories is Pampers, Labour is Huggies, Lib Dems is Aldi's own brand and Reform UK is the old fashioned terry nappies that fall down under load and stink the place out!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

With so many senior Tories having lost their seats, their choice of the next leader is a bit restricted. Off the top of my head, Kemi Badenoch, Jeremy Hunt, Priti Patel and James Cleverly would seem to be the most likely plausible contenders who are still MPs. Is there anyone else?

 

[jfollows]

The big problem for Labour now is that they hardly increased their share of the vote on a reduced turnout compared to the 2019 election, and if you can't improve on the votes they got then by much then it's clear that people didn't vote for Labour, they voted against the Conservatives. The Labour vote share was also significantly down (-5% or so) on the 2017 election result.

If Labour wants to win the next election it's clear that it actually has to deliver now, or the next election will end up being a reverse of this one.

Still, it was good to see a number of Conservatives defeated, ones I didn't care for, including Liam Fox as well as the more obvious bigger names.

EDIT LibDem share of the vote was +1% only compared with 2019.

 

[dangie]

My local Conservative MP was a bookies odds on favourite to retain her seat. She lost it.

I haven't seen any figures but I believe the turnout was very low. If correct I put it down to two main reasons (probably others).

Firstly the voting public have none or little confidence in any of them... or secondly, long term Conservative voters could not bring themselves to vote for anyone else so simply didn't vote.

 

[philosopher]

French friends are telling me it's the same problem there, both the apathy and the disengagement. My MP won my vote by actually being around & at least seeming like he's trying.

The issue with this election was that the result was such a forgone conclusion so many I assume thought there was no point in voting.

 

[Irascible]

Turnout about 8-9% down here, although that's vs one of the old areas in the last GE rather than the byelection for the other half. Clicking around the SW part of the map, seems more like 4 or 5% down is a better figure. An awful lot of LD gains down here.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/uk-constituencies

Has my local constituency as 1/200 (on) a Labour win (hold). Scarcely worth wearing out the shoe leather to go out and vote on Election Day! Foregone conclusion!

Labour hold, as widely predicted, in my local area, but only a 50% constituency turnout, which I think is a lot less than the national average. And, yes, I did vote!

 

[Bantamzen]

The issue with this election was that the result was such a forgone conclusion so many I assume thought there was no point in voting.

I think it's more a case of people simply becoming more disengaged with politics and politicians.

Turnout about 8-9% down here, although that's vs one of the old areas in the last GE rather than the byelection for the other half. Clicking around the SW part of the map, seems more like 4 or 5% down is a better figure. An awful lot of LD gains down here.

In Bradford West turnout was down 14.5% to 48%! That's getting towards local election level turnouts.

 

[jfollows]

Looks like the best the Conservatives can do now is 125 seats. They're on 119 right now with only 6 left to declare. I guess their failure to hit the predicted 131 is as a result of the Lib Dems, who have outperformed the predictions from the exit poll.

LibDem didn’t outperform, their vote share hardly changed from 2019 (+1% I think), they only won seats because people didn’t vote Conservative.

 

[Kite159]

Looks like the Tories held onto both my former 'North West Hampshire' and the new 'Romsey & Southampton North' seats with the labour person losing 2.8% of his vote compared to 2019 to finish 4th.

So no doubt this will be the first area to get paradise paved over to build endless housing blocks to punish the voters.

Hopefully for the country it isn't a case of voting to jump from the frying pan into the fire to get rid of the Tories.

 

[SuspectUsual]

With so many senior Tories having lost their seats, their choice of the next leader is a bit restricted. Off the top of my head, Kemi Badenoch, Jeremy Hunt, Priti Patel and James Cleverly would seem to be the most likely plausible contenders who are still MPs. Is there anyone else?

Braverman, unfortunately

 

[dangie]

The issue with this election was that the result was such a forgone conclusion so many I assume thought there was no point in voting.

Of course that was what happened with the Brexit vote and we know what happened there. If you want change you are likely to vote, if you want things to stay as they are you tend not to.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

One of the final 6 seats to declare has now declared. Hendon - a Labour gain with a majority of just 15 votes! Labour 15 855, Conservatives 15 840. There must've been some frantic recounting going there!

 

[Bald Rick]

So, did Labour win the election, or did Reform and Apathy lose it for the conservatives ?

I’m looking forward to some analysis which shows what would have happened if all Reform votes had been made for the conservatives instead.

 

[DarloRich]

the ticker just started on ‘proper’ tv

@DarloRich - happy with local result? Although I think its the first seat where C+R votes were more than the winning L vote.

Very happy: a young, energetic candidate elected. How matters not. Labour win Buckingham (and Bletchley). That is pretty mega

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The Reform vote share is depressing (4.1 million, 14% overall).
How can that number of people believe the Reform policy aims?

With this vote Reform got 4 seats, while the Liberal Democrats got 71 seats with a lower vote (12.2 million, 12.2%).
These results seem very brittle and could be fully reversed next time.

All down to Kier Starmer now - what a challenge.
I wish him well.

 

[AlterEgo]

So, did Labour win the election, or did Reform and Apathy lose it for the conservstives?

The latter, I think. Voters are not very enthused with Labour but many feel it was time for a change in government to let someone else have a go.

Significant gains for progressive parties like Green and Liberal Democrat will give succour to those on the left, and are a positive sign.

Single issue independents garnering the sectarian vote on Palestine are probably a sign of concern for our democratic health.

 

[jfollows]

Labour lost votes and seats in areas which used to be solid Labour - Birmingham for example. Jess Phillips only just held on to her seat. This is a big problem for them and something they need to sort out - presumably part of the reason for their relatively small gain in vote share is because they lost a lot of votes in these sorts of areas but picked up some votes in others.

 

[Blindtraveler]

The big problem for Labour now is that they hardly increased their share of the vote on a reduced turnout compared to the 2019 election, and if you can't improve on the votes they got then by much then it's clear that people didn't vote for Labour, they voted against the Conservatives. The Labour vote share was also significantly down (-5% or so) on the 2017 election result.

If Labour wants to win the next election it's clear that it actually has to deliver now, or the next election will end up being a reverse of this one.

Still, it was good to see a number of Conservatives defeated, ones I didn't care for, including Liam Fox as well as the more obvious bigger names.

EDIT LibDem share of the vote was +1% only compared with 2019.

Which is sort of what I predicted would happen, and whilst I don't want to get bogged down in arguing with people about whether different parties and their policies are any good or not. I'll go as far as to say that there are now many areas of the country for which labour can offer little or nothing but are now represented by a labour member of parliament, very interesting times ahead indeed
I was sorry about penny. Mordant and several of the other more traditional one nation conservatives losing their seats as we're going to need these people to rebuild and reunite and refocus the party. To that end, I am very glad that Roger gale got back in in his newly altered constituency, albeit somewhat by the seat of his trousers. And same goes for Helen Grant in maidstone who again has settled in well and deserved to hang on
I think we are still waiting for the two Dumfries and Galloway ones
Equally delighted that Christine jardine held on to my old former constituency of Edinburgh West, where again after a shaky start. She's now very much well liked





But away from me that tonight has been the complete annihilation of the SNP way beyond my wildest expectations and they deserve every last bit of that. Bad luck from my own point of view

 

[43096]

DRoss is oot!

UK General Election 2024 - Aberdeenshire Council

www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk

The Reform vote killed it for him. Haha

Probably not wise to crow too much. The SNP got just as big a spanking as the Tories. Which is just as funny and just as deserved.

 

[jfollows]

I was pleased to see Steve Baker, not that he lost, because he was one of the few right-wing Tories I respected, but because he said he was happy that he lost in the end. His point was that he'd have happily carried on as an MP but he was very happy to be free of all the shackles of the job as well.

 

[Geezertronic]

Hardly surprising that the Birmingham constituencies (including my own) chose Labour as they always do, with the exception of Perry Barr who chose an Independent.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

So, did Labour win the election, or did Reform and Apathy lose it for the conservstives?

I’m looking forward to some analysis which shows what would have happened if all Reform votes had been made for the conservatives instead.

That analysis only makes sense if you presume that Reform have taken votes almost exclusively from the Conservatives - and I don't believe that for a moment. From what I saw of poll trends, it seemed to me that when the Reform vote rose in the opinion polls, Labour and Tories tended to fall equally. My impression is that Reform voters tend to be pro-Brexit people who now hate the Tories but don't trust Labour/want something totally different. I reckon at least something like 40% of those people would break for Labour if Reform didn't exist.

 

[renegademaster]

This is overwhelmingly a rejection of the Tories rather than a strong endorsement of Labour or any other party. Numbers of seats are out of all proportion to numbers of votes.

In view of that, I wonder if a magnanimous first action for Starmer should be to recognise this by announcing a commission on electoral reform, with a view to it becoming Labour policy at the next election. Labour membership has been strongly in favour, as have the LibDems historically, and perhaps now the Tories will be in favour too.

And in the alternative universe where Turkeys won the election, their first act is to ensure free Christmas dinners for everyone

 

[Magdalia]

Exit Poll:
Lab 410
Con 131
LD 61
Ref 13
SNP 10
PC 4
Grn 2

A few observations about the exit poll.

It was conducted by Ipsos.

The previous Ipsos MRP poll was a bit of an outlier. In particular there were 6 constituencies where Ipsos predicted a Conservative hold but all other pollsters predicted a Liberal Democrat victory. It will be interesting to see how good the exit poll is at estimating the number of seats won by the Liberal Democrats as a result of tactical voting.

The variations in MRP polls suggest that Scotland is particularly difficult to model with MRP polling.

In the MRP polls the highest prediction for seats for Reform was 7.

I'm looking forward to seeing how near the exit poll gets to the actual result, which is the only one that matters.

There are 5 seats still to declare and the position is this.

Lab 411
Con 119
LD 71
Ref 4
SNP 9
PC 4
Grn 4
Ind 5

As I suspected, the exit poll underestimated tactical voting for the Liberal Democrats in Conservative constituencies, and overestimated the number of seats taken by Reform. All of the polls missed the extent of support for independent candidates in some Labour held constituencies. On the other hand the SNP exit poll result was very close to what actually happened.