That was the election that was, then. Now that Devon West and Torridge has declared, we’ve got all of the data in from the 2010 General Election (or, at least, from part one of an ongoing series). Covering it through charts led to drinking a lot of cola, eating a fair amount of pizza, and stealing three hours of sleep around 9am: but it also brought some ideas into stark relief.
It wasn’t a good night for the Lib Dems. However, with the current electoral system, it’s hard to see how it could be a good one:
(thanks to Michael Dales for the analysis).
Each Lib Dem vote is about a quarter as effective as a Labour or Conservative vote at getting an MP elected. Oxford East and Oxford West and Abingdon elected one Conservative and one Labour MP.
Oxford West and Abingdon
| Conservative | Nicola Blackwood | 23,906 |
| Liberal Democrat | Evan Harris | 23,730 |
| Labour | Richard Stevens | 5,999 |
Oxford East
| Labour | Andrew Smith | 21,938 |
| Liberal Democrat | Steve Goddard | 17,357 |
| Conservative | Ed Argar | 9,727 |
One strong Labour first place, one weak third; same for the Conservatives. The Lib Dems actually outpolled the other parties across the two seats — and not by a little, by roughly 20% — but get nothing. Oxford is an extreme example, but that story played itself out all across the UK.
Something else which I hadn’t realised, but which charting the election made clear: Labour seats declare earlier than Conservative ones. There are a few causes behind that: smaller, more urban seats, so it’s easier to collect the ballot boxes — the Sunderland operation being the most spectacular example! — and, in general, lower turnout. There’s been quite a bit of research on that, but loosely-speaking Labour supporters stay at home in safe seats. You can actually see this effect on Michael’s graph above: the number of votes per Labour MP rises from around 20,000 in the early stages of the election to its final value of 40,000 as the evening, and morning, wear on.
This really shapes how the election story gets reported. For the first few hours of a general election, all of the early seats declaring are Labour-held, and usually they’re ultra-safe, because they’re the ones which get counted quickly. The really safe Tory seats are rural and the driving alone takes longer, and the marginals get people to turn out and vote. The drama in the election is always going to come right at the end, for purely mechanical reasons if nothing else. Maybe that’s why even the boring bits of election-night TV are so compelling!
One last thing – you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to keep up with the busiest declaration times! By 3am everyone’s a bit bleary-eyed, even on a good day, and when a seat’s declaring every twenty seconds…
