Friday, May 07, 2010

The UKIP effect

A quick but inaccurate sounding suggest that the minority vote cost David Cameron his victory. What in 2005 I termed the "UKIP effect" cost the Tories an estimated 28 seats. And, neglected entirely by the media and the claque, it was very much in evidence in this election.

My early calculations indicate that over 20 seats could have gone to The Boy if he had courted the minority vote, which would have meant offering a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

An example of this is the Dudley North result. Labour gets 14,923 votes in a marginal that the Tories expected to get, putting them on 38.7 of the vote. Graeme Brown for the Conservatives gets 14,274, and Mike Beckett for the Lib-Dims gets 4,066.

But the "killer" is UKIP. Against a majority of 649, Malcolm Davis gets 3,267 votes - 8.5 percent of the vote, up 3.9 percent. Easily, the UKIP vote handed to the Conservatives, would have given them the seat. On the other hand, there is the BNP which polled 1,899 and the National Front on 173. Some of those might have gone to Labour, but others would have been Labour on their way to Tory.

With only two results yet to declare, the Tories are on 305, Labour – in contrast with the first exit poll – is "over-performing" with 258 and the Lib-Dims are on 57. Add the 20-plus seats attributable to the UKIP effect and The Boy could be in Downing Street right now.

And not one of the media pundits have even mentioned this. Nor will they – their brand of politics is a reality-free zone.

RESHUFFLE SPECIAL THREAD