This is amusing:
What about Ukip votes in marginal seats? On this, I defer to the best political scientist in Britain, Professor Tim Bale of Sussex University, who wrote recently on The Spectator’s Coffee House blog that “the impact is vastly exaggerated. At best we’re talking about no more than a handful of seats — certainly nowhere near enough to mean the difference between the Tories being the biggest party and a comfortable overall majority”. Persuaded? You should be.
If memory serves Tim Bale was predicitng before the euro elections that UKIP were flatlining on 3% or so and would not win any seats.
As he had at the previous euro elections.
That we got 16.5% and beat Labour into third doesn’t seem to have sunk in in any manner, does it?
2 responses so far ↓
1 Thornavis. // Apr 22, 2012 at 11:02 am
Well here’s another way of looking at it. http://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2012/04/22/remember-when-ukip-was-going-to-take-out-john-bercow/
There’s a UKIP candidate in my ward but this doesn’t exactly inspire me to cast my vote in their favour.
2 Tim Almond // Apr 22, 2012 at 11:43 am
The biggest effect is the collapse of the LD vote. Many seats that the Conservatives had previously won because the anti-Tory vote had been split will now go to Labour.
But, even if that didn’t happen, UKIP going from 3.1% to 9% is going to affect far more than the 21 seats that John Redwood claimed were lost in 2010. Probably 50+ seats.
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