European Elections 2019

[Duncan Gardner]

Nef is correct that the Green's did support calling the referendum, though when it was called the party campaigned for Remain and Reform - and Green voters had the highest proportion of Remain votes, higher even than Lib Dems. It was clearly a mistake to do so, which the party has recognised. It's a legitimate point to make

Agreed. At our last Conference, Lucas said (in answer to a question from the audience) that it was her biggest mistake in politics.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Molly Scott Cato was on Newsnight last night. Only a brief interview but she came over very well. You should get her in front of the cameras more often.

[Diable Rouge]

Is the very concept of "Lib Dem/Green/CHUK" an attempt to save the blushes of the (former?) media darlings in the last grouping?

That, and they don't break down the Labour Remain figure for "Other", which would be largely SNP and Plaid.

[Duncan Gardner]

Molly Scott Cato was on Newsnight last night. Only a brief interview but she came over very well. You should get her in front of the cameras more often.

Rough pecking order (when we can actually muscle in, it's often difficult)

Lucas
Berry
MSC
Bartley
Amelia Womack (national deputy leader but not an elected councillor)
Magid Magid (mayor of Sheffield)

our other 2 English MEPs (Jean Lambert and Keith Taylor) are retiring

[Nocturnal Submission]

I think I've still got a signed letter from Jean Lambert from when I wrote to the Ecology Party for some of their literature after the 1979 GE.

[Diable Rouge]

http://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1129472524096610304

[Nefertiti2]

more exceptional analysis from the Liberal Democrats.

Did everyone spot Vince Cable becoming a NonExec director of Royal Mail which he sold for way below its value as Business Secretary.

https://twitter.com/danielhowdon/status/1129508967506485249

[Diable Rouge]

Spanish polling (bold figures are seat estimates) - AR is a group combining Bildu (Basque left) and Esquerra (Catalan left), while Junts is the other Catalan nationalist party.

http://twitter.com/electo_mania/status/1129620588564307968

[DCI Harry Batt]

I can't read that I'm afraid. Is it interesting?

Can anyone confirm for me exactly how the system works in England, please, thank you? Or really just in London, it's just that I assume it's the same across England. Anyway, there's a quota, and if you hit it, you get in, and if you don't hit it, you do't get in, yeah? And no transfers or owt.

So to vote against the Brexit Party scumbags, your vote can go to absolutely anyone else, no? Or how does it make a difference who else you vote for?

[ursus arctos]

D'Hondt, no transfers (except in NI)

The nations are divided into 11 electoral regions: nine in England, plus Scotland and Wales. For this election, Gibraltar votes as part of a combined constituency with the south-west of England.

Parties vying for election submit a list of candidates to voters in each region.

A system devised by Victor D'Hondt, a Belgian lawyer and mathematician active in the 19th Century, dictates the results:

• In the first round of counting the party with the most votes wins a seat for the candidate at the top of its list

• In the second round the winning party's vote is divided by two, and whichever party comes out on top in the re-ordered results wins a seat for their top candidate

• The process repeats itself, with the original vote of the winning party in each round being divided by one plus their running total of MEPs, until all the seats for the region have been taken

[DCI Harry Batt]

Thanks, I was being lazy wasn't I? So it is a bit more complicated. Although reading that through, I don't understand it. I should go find a worked example.

[ursus arctos]

There is one in the link

Basically, you don't want to "waste" your vote on a party that will have too few votes to ever feature in the allocation.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Ok thanks.

[Diable Rouge]

Latest Irish poll:

http://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1129779257968930821

[Diable Rouge]

And a second good poll for the Greens - could potentially win an MEP in Dublin, assuming the vote is concentrated there:

http://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1129795082880729088

[Diable Rouge]

Back to the UK, and the decline in the Green vote sees a net fall in Remain seats to 16:

http://twitter.com/flaviblePolitic/status/1129832066525347841

[Diable Rouge]

Could have two Irish Green MEPs, though the final seats in South and Dublin look like a real pile-up. MNW could see two FG elected, given the huge surplus, with the last seat between FF, Ming and Casey, though October's runner-up is likely to suffer the same sophomore syndrome as Declan Ganley.

http://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1130105647876452354

http://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1130105650208542720

http://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1130106768871350273

[Diable Rouge]

Would be the first time for Plaid to outpoll Labour in any Welsh election:

http://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1130483280350982145

[Lang Spoon]

[URL]https://twitter.com/BallotBoxScot/status/1130062632726224896[/URL]

[Lang Spoon]

Pure pish both Brexit and the Tories look to get a seat.

[Etienne]

Really don't read too much into individual polls.

[Lang Spoon]

This isn't the first full Scottish sample to suggest so but.

[Etienne]

No, it's a perfectly plausible outcome. But when things are in such flux, and the margins are so small, and the pollsters have nothing sensible to weight against, you need a lot of pinches of salt.

[Diable Rouge]

With SF and DUP comfortable for the first two NI European seats, most media interest centres around the third, with today's poll further tightening matters:

Eastwood (SDLP) 13.3%
Kennedy (UUP) 11.8%
Long (Alliance) 11.6%
Allister (TUV) 9.3%

[Nocturnal Submission]

Two out of the three latest opinion polls have the Brexit Party in the high-30%+ range. The Lib Dems as still by far the most popular of the Remain options. Labour's vote is the most volatile, estimated at anywhere from 13% to 22%, the Tories are hovering around the high single figure mark (percentage not votes!) along with the Greens, with ChUK and UKIP consistently in the low single figure range.