Most fascinating thing about election? Not the landslide or collapse

After all the excitement of last week’s general election, most voters will be turning to what happens next under the new Labour government.

Spare a thought though for us poor election nerds, for whom time is stood still on the 4th of July. I doubt I’m alone in having almost no idea who has been appointed to the Cabinet or what the Prime Minister has done so far, so focussed am I on the data that shows how they got there.

From the moment polls closed right the way through until late Sunday night, I spent every waking moment poring over the figures from Scotland. The only thing that’s prevented my brain from turning into one big election results mainframe this week is that I’ve had to do my day job too.

As is always the case with elections, the most fascinating stories aren’t really the headlines about how many votes and seats each party won. Instead, these are told through the detail of the underlying data, how each party’s vote was distributed and shifted, and how that fit with pre-election expectations.

Casting your eye across the new political map of Scotland, you could be forgiven for assuming those remaining SNP yellow constituencies represent their remaining strongholds. In truth, they won most of these with shares not that much higher than their national total.

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Take Aberdeen for example, where they won 33.6% of the vote and held both seats. That wasn’t really any better than the 32.3% they won in Glasgow, where they lost all six seats. Instead, it was all about how their opposition split.

In Glasgow, Labour won the lion’s share of the non-SNP vote with the Greens picking up most of the rest. Thus, six Labour MPs. In Aberdeen however, the vote split much more evenly between Labour and the Conservatives, and the Lib Dems were distinctly more present.

This matters because it creates competing incentives for parties at different elections. Under First Past the Post, the SNP’s logical play would be to shore up support in Aberdeen and perhaps give Glasgow up. Yet under the proportional system at Holyrood, an equal vote share but three times the seats makes it vital to stall the decline in Glasgow and wider Central Belt.

Those of us who had been following the polls closely have also been picking over the bones of what they got right – and what they got wrong. As with so much else in this election, Scotland offered a big contrast to England.

Up here, I’d summarise polling as “votes strong, seats wrong”. Compared to the final average on the Ballot Box Scotland website, the final result was within about 1% for every party, a remarkable level of accuracy. Some individual polls, like the last from Savanta that put the SNP ahead, were admittedly off. They’ve put their hands up on that though, and it’s a reminder to follow averages and trends, not fixate on single polls.

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Despite this, the scale of seat losses for the SNP took most people by surprise. Around 10 seats had been the lowest expectation I had, but it was the lowest for a reason. Even with those fancy new MRP polls everywhere, almost everyone failed to foresee just how far the SNP would fall, with the general expectation being for about 15 seats or so.

England though was distinctly “votes wrong, seats strong”. Going into this election, everyone expected a big Labour landslide, the Lib Dems to surge to great heights, and the Conservatives to be completely eviscerated. That’s exactly what happened, Labour ending with a jaw-dropping 290 seat advantage and the Lib Dems their best result since their Liberal glory days.

Yet after months of polls suggesting a 20%+ lead, and the final average coming out at 18%, Labour won just 10% more than the Conservatives. The only reason their vote went up at all was from their Scottish surge, their vote across England and Wales up a measly 0.2%. It wasn’t all wrong though, as polling got the Lib Dems and Greens spot on.

(Image: Derek McArthur)
Possible explanations for this scale of polling miss are being feverishly investigated. It could be localised but significant support Labour lost to Independents couldn’t show in national polls. Rather more could be down to the election being seen as such a foregone conclusion Labour’s lower propensity voters just stayed at home.

This shock stability in the Labour vote again has fascinating implications. Beyond the numbers showing (as I’ve been banging on about for years) more clearly than ever how much of an undemocratic farce First Past the Post is, they demonstrate how much vote efficiency matters under it. Labour won not by gaining floods of new voters across the UK, but picking them up in key seats they needed to win from Conservatives whilst losing them to the left where they could most afford to do so.

That isn’t without long-term risks though. There’s no guarantee more centrist voters stick with Labour after the Conservatives have some time to pick themselves up… Assuming, of course, they don’t indulge their worst instincts after defeat with a swing to the hard right.

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Meanwhile, Labour is facing a credible challenge to its left for the first time. The Greens’ 4 seats are few, but will give them more attention and impact than before. With strong second places in seats like Bristol East, Bristol South, Huddersfield, Sheffield Central and more, they may be on a Lib Dem-esque path to carving out local strongholds that long-term could grow into a dozen, then dozens, of seats.

That’s getting ahead of myself by at least four years though – I still need to catch up on the last four days, and enjoy a much needed wee holiday! Can anyone let me know who the new Transport Secretary is? I’ve got a bone to pick with how much of a pain it is to get from Glasgow to Cardiff by public transport...