UK - How the BBC reports this election

[Algernon Moncrieff]

When are the results expected?

Voting in this election ends at 22:00 BST on Thursday, 4 July. Ballot boxes for the 650 constituencies are taken from polling stations to counting centres and counts begin immediately. The first seats declare some time close to 23:00 BST, the vast majority are declared before 09:00 on Friday morning.

We estimate 20 results will come in before 02:00 BST and the pace will pick up after that. Between 02:00 and 04:00 there will be 325 seats declared and between 04:00 and 06:00 another 275. The last few results come in later on Friday morning.

It is hard to say when we will know if any party has won the election, with enough MPs elected to form a majority in the House of Commons. It depends on how close the contest is, but it is likely to be sometime after 03:00 BST.

LINK

So shortly after fireworks end on the East Coast, we might have an idea of whether Labour will take Parliament or if the Tories hang on.

[brooklynite]

1. No...you'll know at 5 PM Eastern (10 PM BST)

Immediately after the polls close, a national exit poll is released which is extremely accurate at reporting the winning margin.

That margin will in turn inform the famous SWINGOMETER.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

2. Accurate polling? That must be a European thing.

I love the swingometer. I know I can livestream BBC World Service. I wonder if there is a way to stream their TV coverage.

[brooklynite]

4. BBC America will have coverage

Sky usually has web streaming

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. In one way, we know now - Labour's lead has been commanding since Truss lost to the lettuce

The winning margin in terms of seats seems harder to predict this time; partly because there have been many boundary changes, and partly because modelling such a big swing is hard, when there are multiple parties involved - do you work in terms of "take the national swing between each party, and add or subtract it in each seat?" (which you can't do everywhere, because the Tories can't get negative votes, so do you set their vote to zero in several constituencies? You know that'll never actually be true either), or try and work out proportionate growth or shrinkage for each party? This sadly means the swingometer will be "just a bit of fun". There are 4 parties to consider in an awful lot of seats.

On top of that, the predecessor of Reform UK didn't stand in Tory-held seats last time, so modelling their capture of Tories is hard.

This means the exit pollsters, who can normally identify the marginal seats, are either going to have to hugely expand where they take the exit poll, or they have to guess where the marginals will be this time.

To give an idea of the uncertainty, here are the predictions by the "sophisticated" MRP polls for my constituency:

Elect Calc 20-27/5 LD 43.9% Con 25.7% Lab 14.2% Ref 12.6% Gr 2.7%
YouGov 24/5-1/6 LD 31% Con 33% Lab 19% Ref 10% Gr 5%
Survation 22/5-2/6 LD 31% Con 29.3% Lab 23.5% Ref 11.3% Gr 2.8%
Survation 31/5-13/6 LD 27.5% Con 29.5% Lab 23.6% Ref 12.5% Gr 5.8%
MoreInCom 22/5-17/6 LD 53% Con 31% Lab 9% Ref 4% Gr 2%
Savanta 7-18/6 LD 37.6% Con 28.1% Lab 19.8% Ref 12% Gr 2.4%
YouGov 11-18/6 LD 34% Con 29% Lab 14% Ref 16% Gr 5%
Focaldata 4-20/6 LD 33% Con 29.2% Lab 15.7% Ref 17.9% Gr 4%
We Think 30/5-24/6 LD 33% Con 29.2% Lab 22.6% Ref 10.8% Gr 3.7%
Elect Calc 14-24/6 LD 53% Con 19% Lab 9% Ref 15% Gr 3%
Survation 15-27/6 LD 30.4% Con 30.8% Lab 23.5% Ref 10.2% Gr 3.9%
Focaldata 10/6-1/7 LD 34% Con 29% Lab 17% Ref 17% Gr 4%
Survation 15/6-1/7 LD 31.7% Con 29.2% Lab 25.3% Ref 9.1% Gr 3.6%
MoreInCom 24/6-1/7 LD 41.3% Con 25.8% Lab 19.4% Ref 9.4% Gr 3.2%
YouGov 19/6-2/7 LD 37% Con 27% Lab 13% Ref 16% Gr 5%

So Lib Dems have been estimated between 27.5% and 53%, and Tories between 25.7% and 33%. In a couple of early ones, the Tories were in the lead. In the last 4 taken, the Lib Dem lead has varied from 2.5% to 15.8%.

FWIW, the Labour campaign claimed to me, in an email, that they had "internal polling" showing the Conservatives on 29.8%, Labour 28.3% and Lib Dems back on 22.9%. Which is probably bullshit (the Lib Dems held the seat under somewhat different boundaries from 1993 to 2015; the Tories before and after that). But the exit poll will be severely tested - it has to do what the MRP polls try to do, but get it right.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

5. It's just odd to see the juxtaposition of the UK and EU

Politically, the EU seems to be making a hard right turn. Meanwhile, the UK finally seems poised to turn away from the Tories. Real shift over 10 years.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

6. Since you seem to have some knowledge

At this point, what is the fundamental difference between Labour and the Lib Dems?

Why isn't the SNP more of a factor this go-round?

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Between the current leadership - not much difference, ideologically

While Labour still has plenty of old-style members, who liked Corbyn because he's a genuine socialist, they've had their time in control, and it didn't work, so they're very much back to the Blair years of centrism, and doing nothing to scare people who might vote for either them or the Tories. It's disappointing how little they're willing to change (despite "change" being their literal, and entire, slogan this election).

The Lib Dems may appear a little more liberal than Labour at the moment, but that could be because they know they don't have to deliver on a policy.

The SNP isn't a factor because Labour can win a majority without taking a single seat in Scotland. But they have their own problems; Nicola Sturgeon and her husband (chief executive of the SNP) are under investigation for misuse of party funds (a nice motorhome seems to have been purchased and then used by one of their families), so she resigned as leader. Her successor quickly blew up the agreement with the Scottish Greens that ensured a majority in the Scottish parliament (he decided the carbon reduction target they'd agreed was unreachable, so binned it), so he resigned too. So they will lose many of their Westminster seats, mostly to Labour.

[Emrys]

9. "a nice motorhome seems to have been purchased and then used by one of their families"

A couple of points of information, and a timeline fix:

The motorhome was intended as an election battle bus, bought when COVID was still a factor and there was a prospect of having to campaign while being unable to seek local accommodation because of isolation measures. It was included as a purchase in the SNP's accounts. The Lib Dems have a similar vehicle. It had to be parked somewhere, and Sturgeon's mother had space in front of her house. There's been no public evidence of family use of it, but even if they did use it, they would be doing the owner a favour as these vehicles benefit from being driven rather than left to sit for very extended periods.

Sturgeon actually resigned (citing exhaustion, not least from her efforts during the COVID crisis and lack of energy to do more battle with Westminster over a strategy for an independence referendum) before the ridiculous and overblown police raid that saw a media frenzy, a flamboyant forensic tent set up on their front lawn, impressive hordes of uniformed coppers swarming the place, and perusal of "evidence" including garden implements, tea bags and pens. Many of us who've followed events have been surprised that a decision on whether to proceed with charges of "embezzlement of party funds" will be pursued against Sturgeon's husband (there's been no hint of charges against Sturgeon herself since the search) wasn't announced in the immediate run-up to election day. Any such charges should be seen in the context that Sturgeon's husband personally loaned the SNP £100,000 and to date hasn't sought repayment.

The Greens effectively blew up the agreement with the SNP, not Humza Yousaf - if you read my posts on the UK Forum at the time, you'll see that the Greens were not in any fit shape to be stable partners in any government because of internal turmoil over leadership issues. Since John Swinney took over the SNP's leadership, the situation has quickly stabilized and improvements in his own personal ratings would be the envy of any politician.

If the SNP do lose seats (and few of us expect them not to), that will have less to do with happenings at Holyrood and much more to do with Labour and the media deliberately confusing what are devolved issues and what are reserved issues to Westminster, the latter being more germane to a UK-wide election, and the insistence that Scottish voters must vote Labour to "get rid of the Tories" when in fact such authorities as polling guru John Curtice have pointed out this is nonsense as Labour is set for a plentiful majority in the rest of the UK anyway and Scotland's vote has only affected the outcome of UK election twice in the last 70 years or so. Labour has also argued that Scots are better off having MPs who are in the party of government than part of the Opposition - this runs counter to past experience, when Scotland has sent up to 50 Labour MPs to Westminster, and they have proved to be feeble cannon fodder for the party's overall agenda.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. You're right the motorhome turned up after, not before her resignation

but it hasn't exactly helped them .

As far as the Greens "blowing up the arrangement" - nah. Yousaf ditched the carbon target. That set it all off. Just saying "I don't like the Greens anyway" doesn't change that.

[Emrys]

11. If you read what I wrote at the time about the carbon target in the UK Forum,

you'll see that originally the SNP, following scientific advice, wanted a less ambitious but achievable target, but were bounced by the Opposition during the parliamentary votes on it into accepting a more ambitious one that proved to be unachievable, as predicted, and totally unrealistic unless the country were to start taking petrol and diesel vehicles off the road like yesterday.

You could say the Opposition deliberately set the government up to fail, and maybe the Greens were too optimistic, to be kind.

Yousaf was following the science when he made his announcement. Meanwhile, the Scottish Greens were going though one of their leadership crises which saw them within a couple of weeks of impending implosion and used the situation and their cries about hurt feelings to rally their troops, while the SNP chose not to capitalize on the situation by pointing this out as there were other more immediate priorities and they maybe calculated they'd need the Greens' votes at some future point, so least said, soonest mended.

I've never denied any of this hasn't helped the SNP, but nor will trying to rewrite history.

[Emrys]

8. The Lib Dems were formed from a split of right-wing Labour figures

who left to set up the Social Democratic Party, which had mixed electoral fortunes, mainly helping the Tories to maintain their majorities, before collapsing and merging with the Liberal Party.

Their line-up, policies and name went through a few changes before they settled on being the somewhat European-sounding Liberal Democrats.

On the ground, they have a reputation for tailoring their claimed policies to appeal to whatever they think local voters will go for, national agenda be damned.

They were a significant force in the 2010 election that brought in David Cameron as Tory Prime minister and ultimately led up to the pathetic spectacle that is the Conservative Party today. They went into an ill-judged coalition with the Tories in the aftermath of that election, which may have moderated the worst of the Tory policies, but they didn't leverage to the power they had and made too many concessions to the Tories, and paid the price for that in subsequent elections.

Setting aside some notable politicians they've had in or near the leadership over the years, they've generally served as a repository for a protest vote or a "none of the above vote" for those who can't stomach Labour or the Tories. There have been areas in the UK, like some in the north of Scotland, that have reliably returned Lib Dem MPs over the years.

I'd sum them up as opportunist centrists, but it's hard to place them on a political spectrum as they've been a bit slippery on policy over the years and Labour and the Tories have shifted so much, but they'd like to see themselves as considerably more centrist than the Tories, and are not too far from Labour's current stances, with a bit of variation at the edges.

The SNP only stands for Parliament in Scotland, so its maximum seat number would be 57. That's large enought to be potentially significant, be entitled to ask the prime minister formal questions and hold places on or chair certain committees, but not large enough to hold any real sway at Westminster unless the party in government had a slim majority. The last Parliament saw the SNP as the third largest party at Westminster behind Labour and way in front of the Lib Dems.

In past elections, the prospect of the SNP holding enough seats in a closely balanced parliament to have leverage over the party of government has been used as a scare tactic to try to suppress the SNP's vote. Given the scale of the Labour victory forecast for this election, that hasn't arisen as a possibility or tactic.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

12. Thank you!