The Öpik History Wars

For many one of the biggest shock results in last year's general election was Conservative Glyn Davies's gain of Montgomeryshire from Lembit Öpik. But for some it wasn't a surprise at all and had been predicted for years.

Now that is standing to be his party's candidate for Mayor of London, there has been a lot of talk about why he lost so dramatically - the biggest anti-Lib Dem swing in a held seat, the most distant Conservative gain and the Lib Dems losing a seat that was supposedly "Liberal forever (so long as they remember to campaign)". And there's some fierce fighting over recent political history.

It's become such an issue that even Öpik's nomination manifesto (warning that's a very BIG file) feels the need to address it, saying the following:

CRITICISMS ANSWERED HEAD ON
Lembit lost his seat in 2010
The failure of the party to retain both the parliamentary and Welsh Assembly seat in 2010 and 2011 in Montgomeryshire is linked to the drunken altercation between Assembly Member Mick Bates and a paramedic which led to his prosecution and to him leaving the party. Many were aware of Lembit's celebrity profile and assumed that this was the cause of the loss. Regrettably the party did worse in 2011 even indicating a common factor for both poor results.

This just does not convince. And it's unsurprising that it's provoked blog post responses from both the Lib Dem Welsh Assembly Member Peter Black (Lembit Öpik and the rewriting of history) and Conservative MP Glyn Davies (Lembit - take it on the chin like a man.).

I've commented myself on the matter - see for instance my comments at Dave Hill's London Blog: London Lib Dems will choose their mayoral candidate from field of four for my trading the statistics - and so for now I'll just confine myself to showing that the defeat was being predicted long before Mick Bates hit the paramedic, even if not everyone picked up on it.

First from a Usenet post I wrote two years ago:

Montgomeryshire isn't quite the "Liberal forever (except when they're too busy planning centenary celebrations to actually campaign to retain it)" bastion of legend but in several ways is very much a personalist constituency. Now sure I have my personal biases but much of what I've heard from there (including from my sister, who until recently lived and worked in Machynlleth at the very west of the seat and is somewhat to the left of me), Lembit Opik's popularity is shrinking faster than an asteroid burning up in the atmosphere because of his clowning around, high profile personal life and lack of any serious political track record.

By contrast the Conservative candidate is Glyn Davies is widely respected across the political spectrum - I've heard many Plaid members openly say a lot of good things about him (and even that they'd vote for him) - and if anything has increased his appeal by losing his list seat in the last Assembly elections only because the Conservatives gained two constituencies. Whilst the Assembly list results aren't a 100% guide to what will happen in a Westminster election, it's notable the Conservatives topped the poll there.

Furthermore with the Liberal Democrats under pressure in the neighbouring seats of Brecon & Radnorshire and Ceredigion they simply can't target all their energy in Mid & West Wales on Montgomeryshire even if they wanted to - and from comments by Lib Dem activists I get the feeling that many would not want to anyway and are certainly not going to haul themselves great distances to allow Lembit to carry on as Mr Celebrity.

(Message from discussion Opinion poll in Wales on uk.politics.electoral at Jun 16 2009, 11:08 am

Next there's UK Polling Report's specific discussion on Montgomeryshire. Many amateur (and not so amateur) psephologists comment there and unrealistic predictions are easily shot down. People were predicting the Lib Dems were in Öpik-specific difficulties as early as February 2007, with the earliest outright prediction of a loss in July 2008.

Finally there's the Vote UK discussion thread on Montgomeryshire. The earliest outright defeat prediction was in September 2007.

One other point has emerged - Öpik neither wrote his own manifesto nor checked it before it was submitted - see his comments in WalesOnline: Peter Black launches furious attack on 'self-obsessive' Lib Dem colleague Lembit Opik. If he's not even in control of his own campaign, how could he ever hope to be in control of London?

So where have the Conservatives failed to recover?

With the dust of the general election now settled, attention is turning in so many quarters to analysing where each party succeeded and failed. Invariably there has been a lot of different interpretations and arguments, with some based on false assumptions about the actual breakdown of the party's vote base. But there are some studies out there if people know where to look.

Over on LabourList Declan Gaffney has written Immigration and the leadership debate: Time for a reality check which addresses the question of how strong the Labour vote has been amongst the various social groups over recent elections, using figures from Mori. It is rare to find insight on Conservative electoral problems on a Labour blog, but the following caught my eye:

The main reason Labour didn't do even worse in terms of the popular vote in May 2010 is that the Conservatives failed yet again to make a breakthrough among more affluent demographics. It is worth reminding ourselves of how catastrophic 1997 was for the Tories' relationship with what had previously been the bedrock of their support. In 1992, they held 54% of votes in the ABC1 demographics; in 1997 this was down to 39%, which is also the share they won in 2010. The Conservatives have never recovered from their loss of better-off voters in 1997. But they have regained the share of low income voters they held in 1992.

There has been an ongoing mini-realignment away from the traditional class based voting over the past few decades which has seen the middle classes slowly swing leftwards whilst other social groups swing to the right - it's often forgotten that in the 1980s Thatcherism was repelling chunks of the traditional Conservative vote base (some, but not all, public sector professionals) even as it was attracting in others.

The main historic data set can be found at Ipso Mori: How Britain Voted Since October 1974 and the 2010 data is at How Britain Voted in 2010.

Looking at this data shows some interesting conclusions about the three main categories used and how each is voting.

Amongst "Semi/unskilled working class (DE)", the Conservatives polled 31%, the same share as in 1992 and higher than anything since. That share crashed to 21% in 1997 but rose to 24% in 2001 and then 25% in 2005. Under Thatcher the Conservatives had polled 34%, 33% and 30% successively. Labour still led amongst the DEs in 2010 with 40%, the lowest share in at least 36 years (and probably a lot longer). The Liberal Democrats polled 17%, slightly down on the 18% in 2005. Historically they've bobbed between 13% and 24% over the period.

Amongst "Skilled working class (C2)", the Conservatives polled 37%, the highest since 1992, whilst Labour polled 29%, the lowest in the 36 year period. The Lib Dems polled 22%, the same as in 1987, and only polled higher in 1983. Looking over the past elections the Conservatives made a major advance here in 1979, drawing level with Labour and then leading or levelling for the next three elections. There was a crash in 1997 with the Labour lead jumping to 23%, but the Conservatives have steadily advanced since from 27% to 29% to 33% to 37%, whilst Labour declined from 50% to 49% to 40% to 29%, and on this occasion the Conservatives took the lead. But it is a lead that has built up over time.

But it's amongst "Middle class (ABC1)", that the figures tell a different story. The Conservatives polled 39% in 2010 - the same as in 1997. And the long term figures show a big change. The Conservatives went from getting consistently in the mid 50s from 1974 until 1992, then crashed to 39% in 1997. But the worst followed, dropping to 38% in 2001 and 37% in 2005. Meanwhile Labour may have got only 27% of ABC1 in 2010, but that's still a better score for them than anything from before the Blair era. Labour polled between 16% and 24% between 1974 and 1992, then jumped to 34% in 1997 and held the same in 2001. In 2005 it slipped to 30% and then dropped to 27% this time. The beneficiaries in all this have been the Liberal Democrats who got 26%, their joint highest since 1983. Back then they polled 28% but declined steadily to 26% to 21% to 20% by 1997, only to see a turn of fortunes with 22% in 2001 and 26% in 2005. This time round they may not have advanced but they didn't fall back.

The small growth in votes for "others" slightly distorts things but the overall figures show that amongst both the C2s and DEs the Conservatives have basically recovered to their 1992 position. For those who want a stunning but true quote try "David Cameron did better amongst the DEs than Margaret Thatcher in her final election."

It's the complete failure to recover the lost ground amongst the ABC1s that remains the Conservatives' biggest stumbling ground. Whilst there was some advance amidst Labour's fall, it was only a small amount. The best that can be said is that the bleeding has been stemmed and more ground has not been lost, which is an improvement on the outcome of the Hague and Howard strategies. Indeed these figures suggest that a hard-line campaign like those fought in 2001 & 2005 would have just continued the Conservative decline here. But there has been a realignment to the benefit of both Labour and the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives need to find ways of either overturning this effect or compensating for it with more advances amongst the C2s and DEs.

Mohammad Asghar AM joins the Conservatives

Mohammad Asghar, Welsh Assembly Member for South Wales East, has today left Plaid Cymru and joined the Conservatives. (WalesOnline: Plaid Cymru AM joins the Conservatives) I'll leave it to others to do the inevitable round of cheers and boos whenever people switch parties.

Asghar was first elected in 2007 when Plaid narrowly gained a list seat from the Conservatives, ejecting Laura Anne Jones. (By a lot of accounts from Wales, this was actually a Conservative gain.) Can Asghar hold his seat in his new party colours?

This is a somewhat complicated question to answer because of the Additional Member System, where the list seats are very much the by-product of a party's results in the constituencies and thus hard to predict. We also have no real idea of how much a personal vote he has that might follow him to the Conservatives or, crucially, whether it will make a difference at constituency level. However as South Wales East is one of the more politically stable regions it's possible to make a few guesses.

The short answer is it's possible but if the Conservatives do too well then he will be unsuccessful. The long answer...

South Wales East has eight constituencies, which each return one member. These are:

• Blaenau Gwent - Independent
• Caerphilly - Labour
• Islwyn - Labour
• Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney - Labour
• Monmouth - Conservative
• Newport East - Labour
• Newport West - Labour
• Torfaen - Labour

Two of the seats have low majorities and could possibly change hands without a political earthquake at the next Assembly election:

• Newport East - Labour are defending a majority of 875 over the Liberal Democrats.
• Newport West - Labour are defending a majority of 1401 over the Conservatives.

(Trish Law's majority in Blaenau Gwent suggests she will hold on. In most calculations this makes no difference.)

The region has four list members and in 2007 the total list entitlement was as follows:

• Labour: 6
• Conservatives: 3
• Plaid Cymru: 2
• Liberal Democrats: 1
• Trish Law: 0
• Others: 0

Trish Law's constituency victory created an overhang, although if Labour won that seat they would also have it, meaning there were five claimants for only four top-up seats. Plaid narrowly pipped the Conservatives to take the final seat - there were less than 400 votes (after division) in it. (The full list allocation was two Plaid, one Conservative, one Liberal Democrat.)

Assuming little change in 2011 then it's possible that any personal vote Asghar has (I have no idea if he has any or not) could tip that final list seat back to the Conservatives. If William Graham is restanding then he will probably get the number one Conservative slot and Asghar would likely be number two and scrape in.

On the other hand his political base is in Newport where he was a councillor and Plaid's Newport East candidate in both the 2003 Assembly and 2005 general elections. Whether any personal vote he may have will transfer to his constituency running mates (dual candidacies are banned in Wales) is unclear as is how much there is. It could help tip West into the Conservative column and make Newport East a three way photo finish (the Conservatives are only 1000 behind the Lib Dems).

If the Conservatives gain Newport West then the Conservatives would still win one top-up seat, though it would be the fourth one allocated and Asghar will go down to defeat.

If the Conservatives don't gain Newport West and the Liberal Democrats gain Newport East then the Conservatives and Plaid will each take two list members and Asghar will be re-elected.

If the Conservatives gain Newport West and the Liberal Democrats gain Newport East then the list members will be two Plaid, one Labour and only one Conservative, with Asghar defeated.

Such are the uncertainties for anyone standing as a list member of the Assembly. Of course if there is a significant shift in the votes cast in 2011 then all predictions are off.