Oldham West and Royton by-election

[Esseesse]

The Oldham West and Royton by-election is on the 3rd of December.

2015 GE result:

Labour - Michael Meacher - 23,630/54.8% (+9.3%)
UKIP - Francis Arbour - 8,892/20.6% (+17.4%)
Conservative - Kamran Ghafoor - 8,187/19.0% (-4.7%)
Liberal Democrat - Garth Harkness - 1,589/3.7% (-15.4%)
Green - Simeon Hart - 839/1.9% (+1.9%)

So it's a pretty massive Labour majority, but there's an outside chance of some upset. The postal vote deadline is 5pm today.

Anyone in this constituency?

[Esseesse]

Halb said:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/12...

indeed. As ever with these kinds of stories, comments disallowed.

[Esseesse]

An interesting post from an Oldham Labour campaigner

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/3tq9f...

Campaigner said:

...Conclusion labour have huge problems with their working class vote from what I have seen. These results were essentially reflected across the board by the 100 other campaigners over the last 2 weeks. Ukip is more popular than Farage though very few actively dislike him. But Corbyn has completely turned off his vote.

Edit: Also I read in another post in a more general thread on Reddit that Labour are bussing in canvassers which is apparently a bad sign.

Edited by Esseesse on Monday 23 November 16:09

[Esseesse]

Coffee House: Labour increasingly nervous about Oldham West and Royton by-election

[Esseesse]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Pesty said:

Interesting tweet from a guardian editor I believe


https://mobile.twitter.com/helenpidd/status/670267...

Another tweet:

Just experienced that byelection hardy perennial: postal voters who have already voted but don't know for whom. Bloc vote much...

[Esseesse]

Puggit said:

Labour rally last night (according to Guido)

http://order-order.com/2015/11/30/labour-hold-anot...

[Esseesse]

Lord Ashcroft: Based on Ladbrokes' latest odds, here is their updated projection for Thursday's Oldham West & Royton by-election.

Labour 41%, UKIP 38%, Cons 14%, LD 6%.

[Esseesse]

Why Oldham West could be just the start of Labour’s worries

I think this sums up Labour's problems, specifically: Like most European social-democratic groupings, Labour is an uneasy coalition between its industrial or ex-industrial core and what Michael Frayn called “the Herbivores”: “do-gooders . . . readers of the News Chronicle, the Guardian and the Observer . . . signers of petitions, the backbone of the BBC”.

There is a wide and growing (especially in the last 5/10 years) gulf between the old manual working Labour voter and the trendy lefty university educated Labour voter. The gulf IMO is in social attitudes, not economic position.

[Esseesse]

woowahwoo said:

"old manual working Labour voter" - Isn't that description at least 30 years out of date?

Probably to an extent, however I don't think that identity is dead.

Steel refineries only recently closing... Do you think manual labour is an unsuitable description for the job of working on a car production line for example?

[Esseesse]

johnxjsc1985 said:

woowahwoo said:

"old manual working Labour voter" - Isn't that description at least 30 years out of date?

yes get with the plan its now "hard working Labour voter"

"hard working families"

[Esseesse]

Axionknight said:

Any news on when the result is due? Been a quiet one compared to by elections of late, with the Syria coverage taking up so much of the news' interest.

Tomorrow morning. This Week has by election coverage from 23:40 till gone 2am.

[Esseesse]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

They should have to as they will have the figures. Transparency is of utmost importance. They should give a breakdown by ballot box and counter too (protecting identity if required).

[Esseesse]

Twitter suggesting that Labour have done quite well, especially on postal votes.

[Esseesse]

Pesty said:

I wonder what the breakdown of the postal votes was and if it matched the overall results.

Nuttal said 99% Labour!

[Esseesse]

Scuffers said:

Yes, take out the postal's, and Labour would have still won, but the margins would then be more believable and your 'walk-over' would not be there.

Indeed. If the postal vote was very very skewed towards Labour, then the result on the day would have been close enough to fit with the expectations that people on the ground had.

Will there be a postal vote for the EU referendum?

[Esseesse]

DaveCWK said:

Is there a breakdown available yet of the postal votes? Just wondering if the percentages gained for each party overall roughly tally with the postal votes if they were to be taken in isolation. And if not, why not.

I read something to suggest that parties get to see a breakdown by ward immediately, but often (though not always) the postal vote details are released a week or two later.

[Esseesse]

Dog Star said:

BOR said:

What a walk over.

Lots of egg on lots of hard-right faces today. How could you get it so wrong ?

Errrr.... I've been using the Guardian as my source of info on this one and they were just as wrong - not the "little bit wrong" that they were in the GE (predicting another coalition), but totally and monumentally wrong (in "their" favour, mind you). Similarly reputable pollsters like YouGov.

How can they all get it so wrong? Did the journos and people on the streets just sit in the boozer and invent everything?

They were potentially quite accurate about the vote on the day, that's how.