UK: Tories win final general election seat in Thirsk and Malton

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Fri, 2010-05-28 06:27

Augustus

The Conservatives have won the final seat in Parliament after a delayed general election poll in Thirsk and Malton - a result which appeared to show support for the coalition Government.

By Nick Collins

Published: 28 May 2010

Voters in Thirsk and Malton, where the ballot was postponed due to the death of one of the candidates, elected Anne McIntosh, the Tory candidate, putting Lib Dem Howard Keal in second place.

Labour were pushed into third place with a decrease of 6,416 on the notional results for the newly-formed constituency, in a development described by opponents as “catastrophic” for the party.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7776060/Tories-win-final-g...

Fri, 2010-05-28 07:39

George Victor

U.K. voters are about to discover what "catastrophic" really can mean under a smug Etonian and compliant Lib. :)

Fri, 2010-05-28 08:19

adma

Augustus wrote:
Labour were pushed into third place with a decrease of 6,416 on the notional results for the newly-formed constituency, in a development described by opponents as “catastrophic” for the party.

It only seems "catastrophic" in the isolated context of a de facto byelection. In fact, this was a common general-election pattern in seats where Labour had held second place through most or all of the Blair years. So I wouldn't make too much of a deal about it; even Labour likely regarded it as a long-shot.

Though if Labour went from 23.4% to 3.6%, rather than 13.6%, I'd be concerned...

Fri, 2010-05-28 14:11

Augustus

The link above seems to have a problem with it, so I have reposted it here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7776060/Tories-win-final-g...

Interestingly, it is the Lib-Dems who said it was catastrophic for Labour.

Fri, 2010-05-28 22:31

adma

Yeah, but that's Lib Dem slap-themselves-on-the-back opportunism-of-the-moment for you. But if you parse the seat-by-seat stats, there were actually quite a number of seats--usually otherwise-safe Tory strongholds which had turned marginal and even ultramarginal under Blairmania--where the pattern was similar. But because it was all absorbed into the general-election goo, the "catastrophe" wasn't as noticable or noticed as here...

Fri, 2010-05-28 23:45

Ken Burch

It was a safe Tory area that remained safely Tory under the new constituency boundaries. There was no real surprise here.

It's not as if the Labour candidate was thirty points ahead before the UKIP candidate died.

So really, Augustus, little to gloat about, especially since, as the last line in the Telegraph article points the notional Tory vote share only increased by .2% from the previous election.

Sat, 2010-05-29 14:08

adma

And if Labour had been notionally in 2nd place going into this election, it was only the dead cat bounce from national Labour strength/LD weakness, and perhaps a bit of regional Labour strength/LD weakness. But as it stands, Labour was already notionally 30 points *behind*.

In fact, consider the predecessor seat Ryedale, where the Lib Dems had been the main competition to the Tories--though their vote had an unforeseen collapse in 2005; it's only the add-ons from the former Vale Of York that made this notionally Labour-second-place, and even in Vale Of York proper, Labour and LD were pretty much "tied for second". So, even Labour'd have known they had no hope--the present result being "back to normal", of a sort. Sometimes, seat redistribution works that way...