Saturday, May 2, 2015

Postal vote rumours

Someone has just alerted me to an article on Labour Uncut that contains whisperings from Labour insiders about postal vote results (you know, the results that no-one is supposed to know about).  The gist of it is that Labour are doing much worse than expected in England and are essentially losing the election in the marginals, but aren't doing as badly as expected in Scotland, and are still in contention in more than half of their current seats.

This is of course second-hand information which we shouldn't necessarily assume is accurate, although the fact that it's such a mixed bag for Labour means that it has the ring of truth to it.  It would also be consistent with the fact that the party do seem to be doing more than simply going through the motions in their Scottish campaigning.

However, to offer a reality check, there were similar reports in the run-up to the 2007 Holyrood election.  In fact, Nick Robinson announced live on the BBC that Labour sources had told him they were ahead in seats that they were supposed to be behind in.  If memory serves me right, we even saw exact figures from Ochil (in breach of the rules) showing Labour in the lead.

In the event, the national result was indeed a bit closer than the opinion polls had been suggesting, so in that sense what we're seeing tonight may be a meaningful warning sign.  But on the other hand, the SNP went on to win many of the seats that Labour had been so excited about after looking at the postal votes.  In Ochil, for example, the result was SNP 38.5%, Labour 36.9%.  People who vote by post aren't necessarily going to be a representative cross-section of the general population - they may be older, and more small 'c' conservative.  If so, it could be that the real SNP surge won't make itself felt until Thursday itself.

All the same, this is a useful reminder that the situation remains uncertain, and it's important to keep campaigning hard until the very last second.

18 comments:

  1. I'm now a Labour member and campaigner. I think I'll disregard these rumours. I've always taken the approach of preparing for the worst. That way if Labour do much better than expected, I'll be very happy.

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  2. On twitter someone just tweeted that the postal vote checks don't start in Scotland till Monday. Can anyone confirm. If correct the story is clearly just propaganda by a magazine with a reportedly anti-Miliband agenda presumably putting in the stuff about Scotland to make the stuff on the collapse in England seem less like propaganda.

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  3. I don't understand. I though that the ballot was a secret one, and no one was allowed to see the votes before the election day. Is this not correct?

    If folk are allowed to see them, then what are the other parties saying? Do they concur with these views?

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    1. Scottish electoral staff have been told to keep voting papers face down when tallies are being done, so no sly counting could take place. This story must be a fake.

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    2. to many in the polling stations they are all to busy counting they wont notice anything

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    3. Surely they can see through the paper to see the party logos, names, and the X as well?

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  4. I don't understand. I though that the ballot was a secret one, and no one was allowed to see the votes before the election day. Is this not correct?

    If folk are allowed to see them, then what are the other parties saying? Do they concur with these views?

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    1. Postal votes were opened and counted in the referendum. Ruth Davidson admitted this on TV on the night of the referendum. The police became involved in this but I dent think anything came of it. It's only supposed to be sample votes opened.

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  5. I think given that postal voters are older it would be surprising if Labour were not at least neck and neck in this group. As for England, Tory voters are probably even older than Labour voters, and likely over represented among postal voters.

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  6. Better than expected and in contention both mean losing in my book.

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  7. I think this twitter comment from James Dornan MSP may help https://twitter.com/glasgowcathcart/status/594603413213716480

    In my opinion it looks to me like Labour are trying to spin a story to explain the Brand interview rather than why he really went for the interview. I suspect they they thought Brand would endorse Milliband and when he didn't they needed a cover story.

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  8. James Dornan (SNP MSP for Cathcart) has said that nobody at the Glasgow postal vote openings were able to see anything that enabled any assessment to be made.

    For those that don't know, postal votes have to be opened as they come in to the Returning Officer because validating them takes quite a long time (signature and Date of Birth on the statement that accompanies the ballot paper must match records from the application for the postal vote).

    The valid ballots are then counted face down into bundles of 50 and secured in sealed ballot boxes so they can be added to the proper count after polls close.

    In some places it might be possible to get a sense of vote share depending on how individual enumerators handle the ballots but at the openings I have been to this election, they have been very careful not to reveal how votes have been cast.

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  10. My assessment in 2011 was that the SNP share of postal votes was slightly higher than the overall result in our constituency.

    I don't think you can make the same assumptions about the demographics of postal voters now they are available to everyone who wants one instead of people who need them.

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  11. Its not for us to decide who controls our destiny

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  12. labour going round the asians in paisley road west and other areas and taking away their votes entire families so that must be the postal votes - not rumour have been told by several people already they gave their entire family vote to a certain mp and his father in the last few days ie they have already voted

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  13. of course they know the postal ballots, they rig them

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    1. Who are 'they?'. Labour? Conservatives? The Illuminati?

      Remember that Lab and Con are fighting each other here. If either side was rigging postal ballots (on a national level, no less) then the other would be screaming blue murder.

      Like you could keep that kind of thing a secret under the UK system anyway. Thats half the reason we have volunteer counters, so no single party can squirrel away the votes in a corner and count them without oversight.

      There are a myriad of flaws in the UK electoral system, but mass fraud isn't one of them.

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