David Maddox: Political betting
I received a slightly cocky e-mail this morning from a Labour spindoctor concerning his prospects of winning a bet the two of us have on the next general election.
At the start of the by-election he bet me £10 that the SNP will have less than 10 seats after the next general election.
And, according to his e-mail, after Labour's crushing defeat in Glasgow last night he is confident that I will be handing over a state sponsored RBS note some point next year.
I took the bet because I'm always happy to receive free money and my opinion has not changed from last night.
True, the SNP juggernaut came to a halt in Glenrothes and last night only confirmed that the breakthrough needed is still a long way off. The SNP will struggle to get Alex Salmond's target of 20 seats. It seems a long time ago now since the SNP were passing around a list showing that all Labour's seats bar one would fall to them on the basis of the Glasgow East swing.
However, they will gain seats. They managed to win six in 2005 with a mere 17.6% of the vote, they are now regularly polling above 30% in Westminster voting intentions and haven't dropped below 25%.
The other factor is that the Lib Dem vote appears to be disintegrating before our eyes. The party is running at around 12/13% in the polls (half what it was in 2005) and last night came a dismal sixth with just a handful of votes. Most of the disaffected Lib Dems appear to be going to the Nationalists and, to a lesser extent, the Tories.
As things stand my prediction for the SNP at the moment is 14 seats, four for the Tories, nine for the Lib Dems and 32 for Labour. Obviously, though, the chances are I will be very wrong.
At the start of the by-election he bet me £10 that the SNP will have less than 10 seats after the next general election.
And, according to his e-mail, after Labour's crushing defeat in Glasgow last night he is confident that I will be handing over a state sponsored RBS note some point next year.
I took the bet because I'm always happy to receive free money and my opinion has not changed from last night.
True, the SNP juggernaut came to a halt in Glenrothes and last night only confirmed that the breakthrough needed is still a long way off. The SNP will struggle to get Alex Salmond's target of 20 seats. It seems a long time ago now since the SNP were passing around a list showing that all Labour's seats bar one would fall to them on the basis of the Glasgow East swing.
However, they will gain seats. They managed to win six in 2005 with a mere 17.6% of the vote, they are now regularly polling above 30% in Westminster voting intentions and haven't dropped below 25%.
The other factor is that the Lib Dem vote appears to be disintegrating before our eyes. The party is running at around 12/13% in the polls (half what it was in 2005) and last night came a dismal sixth with just a handful of votes. Most of the disaffected Lib Dems appear to be going to the Nationalists and, to a lesser extent, the Tories.
As things stand my prediction for the SNP at the moment is 14 seats, four for the Tories, nine for the Lib Dems and 32 for Labour. Obviously, though, the chances are I will be very wrong.
Labels: David Maddox, Glasgow North East, Labour, Liberal Democrats, polls, SNP
posted by Administrator at
12:49
4 Comments:
And, according to his e-mail, after Labour's crushing defeat in Glasgow last night he is confident that I will be handing over a state sponsored RBS note some point next year.
Labour are getting very cocky if they think that Glasgow NE relates to the rest of Scotland or that it was a "crushing defeat". If the SNP had previously held the seat or their share of the vote had collapsed then that would have been very bad news for the SNP but their vote held up despite the relentless media barrage in Scotland and the attempt to make it a BNP/Labour fight by the UK media in order to deny the SNP any publicity.
Voting in Glasgow NE appears tribal where the vote is for the party, right or wrong, in pretty much the same way as fans support a football team because the vote doesn't appear to have changed much between the halcyon days of Tony Blair's coronation in 1997 and the fag-end of the current Labour Government, bogged down in expenses scandals, surveillance and ID card plans and a slavish following of the neo-cons in the States which has tied Britain down in an endless war in Afghanistan.
Glasgow North East is a new constituency which replaced Glasgow Springburn in the 2005 election but it has roughly the same boundaries and it is still close enough look at previous election results. From this nothing has changed. Broadly speaking Labour gets around two thirds of the vote, the SNP a fifth and the rest is distributed among the others. The Labour party may be crowing about the result but it's just business as usual in Glasgow NE and nothing much has changed apart from a lower turnout.
It is a problem for the SNP in that they haven't made a breakthrough but Glasgow NE was probably one of the toughest nuts in Scotland to crack. I don't think this result has any bearing on how the rest of Scotland will vote in a General Election. I've put in the previous electoral results to show how nothing has changed in the electorate's voting patterns in Glasgow Springburn/NE between 1997 and 2009 despite expenses scandals, financial collapse in the banking system, Iraq, Afghanistan and the assault on civil liberties in the UK all on the current Labour Government's watch.
The results for 1997 (Springburn)
M Martin Labour 22,534 71.36%
J Brady SNP 5,208 16.49%
M Holdsworth Conservative 1,893 6.00%
J Alexander LibDem 1,349 4.27%
J Lawson Scottish Socialist 407 1.29%
A Keating Referendum 186 0.59%
The results for 2001 (Springburn)
Michael Martin Speaker (Lab) 16,053 66.6%
Sandy Bain SNP 4,675 19.4%
Carolyn Leckie Scottish Socialist 1,879 7.8%
Daniel Houston Scottish Unionist 1,289 5.3%
Richard Silvester Ind 208 0.9%
The results for 2005 (Glasgow NE)
Martin M.J.* Speaker 15,153 53.32%
McLaughlin J.F. SNP 5,019 17.66%
Kelly D. Ms. Socialist Labour 4,036 14.20%
Campbell G.M. Scottish Socialist 1,402 4.93%
Houston D. Scottish Unionist Party 1,266 4.45%
McLean S. BNP 920 3.24%
Chambers J. Ind 622 2.19%
The results for the 2009 by-election
William Bain Labour 12,231 59.39%
David Kerr SNP 4,120 20%
Ruth Davidson Conservatives 1,075 5.22%
Charlie Baillie British National Party 1,013 4.92%
Tommy Sheridan Solidarity 794 3.86%
Eileen Baxendale Liberal Democrats 474 2.30%
David Doherty Scottish Greens 332 1.61%
John Smeaton Jury Team 258 1.25%
Kevin McVey Scottish Socialist Party 152 0.74%
Mikey Hughes Independent 54 0.26%
Louise McDaid Socialist Labour Party 47 0.23%
Mev Brown Independent 32 0.16%
Colin Campbell Labour and Tory Tilt 13 0.06%
My god MADox, your more corrupt than I ever imagined.
Cavorting with Labour Spindoctors?
Why ain't I surprised.
I will go along with the 14 seats Maddox predicts but as someone rightly said, this will be seen as a failure because of all Salmonds megaphone mantra on wining 20 seats.
I would be happy at 14 seats although obviously the more the better for the SNP.
Long before my time but I think the previous high for the SNP was 11 0r 12 seats so they have "What it takes" lol.
The seat I want the Tory party to win most is East Renfrewshire. If I were the SNP I would pull out of this seat to ensure Murphy is booted out. Labour played dirty and cheap in Glasgow North East, now the SNP should do the same down in the south side leafy suburbs.
Ok, put your money where your mouth is David. Which 14 seats will the SNP hold after the next general election?
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