More by elections
- Thread starter holywell farmer
- Start date
- Location
- Beragh, Co Tyrone, Northern Ireland
Tory voter apathy?
I guess the concern for Labour is that not a lot of people extra actually voted for them.
What will those people do come GE time?
If they continue to stay at home then jobs a good'un for Labour.
But will they when deciding the government of the country is at stake?
Tories need to re-enfranchise a lot of their voters in the coming months but show no sign of doing so.
What will those people do come GE time?
If they continue to stay at home then jobs a good'un for Labour.
But will they when deciding the government of the country is at stake?
Tories need to re-enfranchise a lot of their voters in the coming months but show no sign of doing so.
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Seems to have been.
"Further to the extreme"?
Maybe just becoming a bit more actually "conservative" wouldn't do any harm first!
Centre right wins elections. If they go chasing Reform, Reform will just move further to the right. You can't outflank by chasing.
This is why Labour have plonked themselves firmly on the side of business, taking no nonsense from anti-semites and have taken fiscally conservative stance. Annoy your base and spread your appeal across the centre ground, don't pander to them like Corbyn did.
Danllan
Member
- Location
- Sir Gar / Carms
Yes, the figures below would indicate that it is overwhelmingly down to Tory voter apathy, but still with a significant drift of Tory voters to Reform. An appalling night for the Tories, but nowhere near as good for Labour as it at first looks. And, of course, we all know full well that many people vote very differently in a By-election compared to how they will in a General Election.
In Wellingborough Labour got only 107 more votes last night than in the 2019 General Election; the Tories got 24869 fewer votes and the voter turnout was nearly 22 thousand votes less than in the General Election. Reform got 3919 votes last night...
In Kingswood Labour got 5316 fewer votes last night than in the 2019 General Election; the Tories got 19037 fewer votes and the voter turnout was over 24 thousand votes less than in the General Election. Reform got 2578 votes last night...
- Location
- Northumberland
So whats your view of what a Conservative should look like ?
Thatcher or Hesletine ?
Rees Mogg or Ken Clarke ?
Another way to put it, Labour got 109 more votes despite turnout dropping from 64.3% in 2019 to 38.0% in 2024. But turnout in the 30s and 40s is pretty typical for a byelection.
It's all about the swing and on that measure, Labour crushed the Conservatives.
Danllan
Member
- Location
- Sir Gar / Carms
No, Labour won but they certainly didn't 'crush' the Tories, to do that they would need to have taken lots of Tory votes- and they clearly didn't do that.
The result was self-evidently down to huge numbers of usual Tory voters simply not turning out, and a small but significant number of them turning to Reform.
More accurate to say that Labour won poorly and the Tories lost appallingly.
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
No, Labour won but they certainly didn't 'crush' the Tories, to do that they would need to have taken lots of Tory votes- and they clearly didn't do that.
The result was self-evidently down to huge numbers of usual Tory voters simply not turning out, and a small but significant number of them turning to Reform.
More accurate to say that Labour won poorly and the Tories lost appallingly.
Will Conservative Party members take any responsibility for that, from their poor choices of successive party leaders/PMs, as well as the policies and antics that came with them?
By any measure a 28.5% swing is a good win.No, Labour won but they certainly didn't 'crush' the Tories, to do that they would need to have taken lots of Tory votes- and they clearly didn't do that.
The result was self-evidently down to huge numbers of usual Tory voters simply not turning out, and a small but significant number of them turning to Reform.
More accurate to say that Labour won poorly and the Tories lost appallingly.
If the conservatives look at the centrist positions taken by Labour which achieved that swing and decide that moving further to the right is the correct course of action then they deserve to get beaten at a general election.
Hard to know what a conservative party of the modern era should be like.
But as someone who doesn't get to vote for any of them and therefore views the situation from a distance I certainly don't see the present day "Conservative Party" as being particularly conservative.
Probably slightly left of centre if anything and in practice little distinguishable from our last Labour governments.
That would seem a pretty fair assessment of the figures.More accurate to say that Labour won poorly and the Tories lost appallingly.
- Location
- Lincolnshire
Nail on head. Bunch of new labour and Green Party imitators. Nothing Conservative about the Conservatives now. Hamstrung by a lot of their own green and human rights legislation. A useless shower of hot air chinless wonders.
The destruction of the Tory party started with Cameron who is now back on the scene & guarenteeing a Tory wipeout!
Danllan
Member
- Location
- Sir Gar / Carms
What a daft question; members only get a choice of candidates as approved by the Parliamentary Party, it's the same in Labour. And members can only choose / influence MPs via constituency associations - once elected they are free agents, even to the extent of changing party if they wish.
But it wasn't a swing, there hasn't been a 'swing'; a 'swing' means voters leaving one party for another. The numbers demonstrate very clearly that this is not what happened overall - though I am sure there were a few who did. The vast majority of Tory voters just didn't turn out to vote at all, and they certainly didn't vote for Labour, so there was no swing.
- Location
- Northumberland
I took it mean that Nielo meant Party Leader/PM,and not prospective parliamentary constituency candidates.
As in choosing Johnson over Hunt,and then your "bright one" over Sunak.
I suppose some would argue that there was a "swing" to Labour amongst those who voted.
Although my own interpretation would be similar to your own and in that regard Labour have failed to attract any significant number of new voters.
That having been said, if Labour get in to power they'll not care, nor will it matter, how it has been facilitated.
It's been obvious for a long time that Tory voters both old & young are fed up with the standard of ministers since Cameron got elected, Johnson only won because of Brexit & Corbyn making Labour unelectable, those Tory voters won't bother voting Tory again & those that do bother walking to the polling station will vote reform, as electable as Sunak & Hunt should be the rest of Tory ministers put in place make voting Tory a complete no no now.