“Where the Brexit party contested seats, they took more votes from Labour than the Tories, and Labour suffered greater losses on average where the Brexit party stood than where it did not.
“This was most evident in the region of Yorkshire and the Humber where the Brexit party had their best performances. For example, in the Don Valley seat, the Brexit party picked up 15 per cent of the vote as Labour’s share fell by 19 percentage points. Despite the strong showing by the Brexit party, the Conservative vote share ticked up from 42 to 43 per cent, allowing the Tories to unseat Labour’s Caroline Flint.”
We like data at the talkshop, so here it is:
This result vindicates Nigel Farage’s pre-election contention that the Brexit Party would take far more votes from Labour than the Conservatives in the North of England and his strategy to put country before party by standing down our candidates in Conservative held seats to head off the Liberal Democrats and their plan to revoke the 2016 referendum result or support a second referendum in a remainer coalition with the Labour Party.
We had some great candidates in Yorkshire. After the stand-down, there were still 37 seats to contest, and as regional campaign manager I did a lot of last-minute driving around the county to get nomination packs and signatures sorted out. Our most successful seats were in the former ‘People’s Republic of South Yorkshire’, the mining areas which had been a Labour stronghold since forever.
In the two Barnsley seats we took strong second places with 30% of the vote share in each. Unfortunately, there was not enough time to get around all the doors to get our message across to voters that the Brexit Party was the direct challenger to Labour. Another two weeks canvassing time and we’d have won there.
Honourable mentions also go to members of the Democrats and Veterans Direct Democracy Party who worked hard in the region on the ground campaign, and David of tactical voting outfit Brexit Kitemark for his endorsements of our candidates in seats where we were the main challengers to Labour.
Although it was a ‘unilateral alliance’ there’s no doubt that along with the Conservatives, we saved Brexit last Thursday night by putting a pro-Brexit government with a large majority into Parliament. However, we didn’t get Brexit Party MPs in place to keep Boris Johnson on the straight and narrow. We can only hope he doesn’t squander the huge advantage he has been given with our assistance. We still want full independence for our country, and any backsliding on the part of the Conservatives will be met with renewed vigour and an even better organised and renewed campaign.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
December 16, 2019 at 02:22AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 