The British General Election of 2015 by Philip Cowley & Dennis Kavanagh

Author:Philip Cowley & Dennis Kavanagh [Cowley, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, American Government, Legislative Branch, Political Process, Campaigns & Elections, Political Parties, Leadership, Executive Branch
ISBN: 9781137366115
Google: 6LE2CwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B019H40S06
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2015-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 8.1 The difference punctuation makes

Front pages of the Daily Mirror, as released after the exit poll and later, revised, as results started to come through. © Mirrorpix.

Where the Sunderland seats were atypical is that all three were held by female MPs. As in 2010, by midnight on election night in 2015, the Westminster Parliament was 100% female.

The odds on a Conservative majority had now fallen to 11/2.

Next came Swindon North, held by the Conservatives. There should, according to the exit poll, have been a small swing to Labour. In fact, there was a 4.3% swing to the Conservatives. Nine minutes later came Putney, also a Conservative hold, with a tiny 0.4% swing to Labour. Neither were target seats for Labour – although Labour had won Swindon North as recently as 2005 and Putney in 2001 – but they were not exactly promising signs for the party either.

The first marginal to declare was Battersea, where Conservative activists had described Labour’s ‘Get Out The Vote’ operation earlier that day as ‘massive’. The result of all that work on the doorstep was a 1.7% swing from Labour to the Conservatives, with the Conservative MP Jane Ellison increasing her majority. It was the moment that those around Ed Miliband began to realise that if it had erred, the exit poll may in fact have slightly over-estimated Labour support. ‘We didn’t particularly expect to win [in Battersea]’, said one of those sat with the Labour leader in Doncaster, ‘but it was the lack of any shift.’

At 1.51 am came the result from Nuneaton in the West Midlands, an absolute key target seat for Labour. A swing of 3.0% from Labour to the Conservatives saw the Conservative majority more than double. David Cameron would later compare it to Basildon in 1992, the moment when it was clear that the Conservatives had won. For those at party HQs, however, watching intelligence pour in from the counts, the realisation that the exit poll was on the money was there long before the results were formally announced. ‘People say it’s Nuneaton’, said one of Miliband’s team. ‘But we knew Nuneaton had been lost long before it was declared. Way before then we knew it was all over.’

The mood was rather different at Conservative HQ. When the BBC flashed up the exit poll with the news that the Conservatives were projected to be the largest party, there had been a muted cheer. Someone shouted ‘Come on, give us the numbers!’ – and when they appeared, the room exploded. It was what one of those present called ‘a sort of stunned euphoria’.10 There was a small private room, in which sat Lynton Crosby, Jim Messina, Mark Textor and Stephen Gilbert. They watched the results sitting together on a sofa, leaping to their feet as one whenever good results came through. For particularly impressive results, Crosby would stand up and play a rough approximation of a fanfare on a bugle as party staff cheered. By 2 am, the Conservative exercise in briefing about the constitutional position had been put on hold indefinitely.

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