FlyTheNest

PaulfromYorkshire wrote:Morning Stephen

Yes it's all about turnout now. The polls assume Labour sympathisers are less likely to vote. Let's see!

Spacedone wrote:Anyone else really glad today has finally arrived? This has been a long campaign. I don't know how Americans put up with year long election campaigns.

seeingclearly wrote: . . .
A bit of a long post written earlier, when it wouldn't post, went away, got very annoyed by a post with a message from Blair to Ed, attracting loads of posts from almost Labour voters, put off and mostly now saying they'll vote green. When I say loads, was into the +1000 comments and rising. FB post, so who knows what it will do.

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I find it baffling that it's so incredibly close, when I see people wavering all over the place, getting pushed and pulled, and that the pollsters are so remarkably unanimous. As polls for other elections have not really delivered I'm not sure what to make of these. Especially as the rags they appear in also have almost unanimous support for one party.

I'm also baffled that this seems not to be reflected in daily life. Do woolly brained lefties like me really never encounter the blue brigade, do they never venture into any common territory. I only lately remembered I do know one, lives very close, but that's, for me an anomaly.

I'd have loved to have been able to meet some, I'm not sure even what they'd look like. But thing I know where some might be.

It looks as though my constituency is safe but right across the road from me is John Hemmings' territory, full of frothing far right people, flag wearing, immigrant loathing, heavy drinking, bovver boot inheritors, interspersed with a few rather nice people who desperately wish they lived anywhere else but can't afford to move.

If I walked North, which is these days a purely hypothetical activity, I'd feel safe in all the suburbs I passed, and a few more I won't, clear to the city centre, but travel south and there are visible markers to deter strangers, and a sullen hostility in the air. Are these the missing voters, do they, without any fanfare, vote tactically?

It's odd because it almost seems less British than Saltley, of 'camera on every street corner' fame, where the streets are empty of the women whose voices you sometimes hear; reminds me of 11 am in the poor streets here during my childhood, when the women done with doorsteps , washing, beating rugs and so on, were quiet in their kitchens, babes out in prams, and undoing aprons and headscarves, taking out rollers over their cups of tea, while their menfolk were hard at it in factories, from where they would flow outward to the pub at noon. Today the corner pubs in Saltley are no more, replaced by mosques and the lunchtime sirens by the call to prayer, but they still seem more English than the edgy places to my south where I'd no sooner walk at night than at midday.

Tonight I'm wondering whether my city can be healed. The places I find safe and haves for decades been able to walk through, even as a lone woman, with no sense of danger or threat, are the fearsome Trojan horse lands, though we've really seen little evidence of this mythical objects existence, and where this week school heads spoke of dead animals being left on fences and in the playgrounds of young children. I deeply suspect that the animals originate in the areas I wouldn't venture into, where dogfighting is not unknown. Along with the cars that anxious parents report to be cruising the roads close to our schools..... filled with hate shouting youths.

The fault line runs right past my house, the evidence of its existence the graffiti, unbearably reminiscent of the past, that appear on the long white wall that leads to the bus stop that caters for the thousands that travel our outer circle route, in and out of our communities, many of them our mixed young teens, every shade of human, travelling the long routes to and from home. It gets repainted a lot, this wall. Seen a lot too. And at night I sometimes hear voices that sing or shout the same messages, and am appalled.

Whatever result we get I feel fearful, hopeful, confused about our future.

i wonder about how close things are and the results are said to be be likely to be, and if the fractures are too great, or the trust too hard to regain. And I worry for the peaceful mixed communities interspersed everywhere that merge easily into our more visibly ethnic areas. I wonder how damaged we really are, and whether we'll be allowed to grow back together. Whether the media shouting will cease and the right wing haranguing come to an end.

We'll have to wait and hope and see. And hope too there's enough people here who will stand together in solidarity. I'd like the wall to have a community feel, based on solidarity not polarity, but it wouldn't survive the day. I'd like community orchards on the wide swathe of green across the way, but they'd not be allowed to survive.

We are free of the howls of 'red Tories', though, and I've found something - a tiny bit of certainty!

Lonewolfie wrote:

mldf02365.GIF

(It seems the advocates of a Landslide on here are not alone)

(Apols as ever if it's too big)

Lonewolfie wrote:

mldf02365.GIF

(It seems the advocates of a Landslide on here are not alone)

(Apols as ever if it's too big)

yahyah wrote:I see the Guardian have given Ex-pat Scot Nat Irvine Welsh a lot of space to spout against Labour, and whinge about the English party.

yahyah wrote:I see the Guardian have given Scot Nat Irvine Welsh a lot of space to spout against Labour, and whinge about the English party.

ephemerid wrote:Right!

Done the estates - in the windows: 4 Labour posters, 2 Green (well, this IS Hay) - Conservative: 0, Liberal Democrats: 0

Met a wonderful old lady (Labour poster in window), dressed in a pink quilted dressing gown, hair perfectly coiffed, who nipped out to tell me to tell Matthew that she has always voted Labour and always will.
She has complained to the council (no, I don't know either) that the LibDems keep sending her pretend newspapers and asking her to keep the Tories out. She has lots of friends and is telling them all to vote Labour.

Just lovely, she was.

Spacedone wrote:Anyone else really glad today has finally arrived? This has been a long campaign. I don't know how Americans put up with year long election campaigns.

ohsocynical wrote:Michael Oatway ‏@MichaelOatway96 11 mins11 minutes ago

Turnout expected to be 73% today, the highest since 1992!!

frightful_oik wrote:Well, I've done my bit.
AK may know this. Are we expecting Lab to make gains or losses in the local elections?

ohsocynical wrote:Michael Oatway ‏@MichaelOatway96 11 mins11 minutes ago

Turnout expected to be 73% today, the highest since 1992!!

yahyah wrote:

ohsocynical wrote:Michael Oatway ‏@MichaelOatway96 11 mins11 minutes ago

Turnout expected to be 73% today, the highest since 1992!!

I saw something that in Hornsey & Wood Green an official had estimated it could be as high as 80% there.
Hopefully to kick Featherstone out and go back to Labour.

WelshIan wrote:Morning All,

A couple of questions:

Will the SNP support the implementation of Leveson, if Labour have to rely on them?

I seem to remember that if Labour and the Tories have the same percentage voter share, then Labour gets more seats? If it is neck and neck in the polls then shouldn't this mean that Labour have more seats, or are we having to discount Scottish seats lost to the SNP?

NonOxCol wrote:Good morning everyone.

Thank you all for the last five years on the Guardian politics blog, and for the two and a half years on this forum.

Wish I could go through the night with you, but I have to get up for work at 5:40am. This will probably be the first site I check over breakfast.

I live in a Tory marginal with a majority of 536, so I can't bear to imagine failure here. I didn't have much time for campaigning, but I did donate to Oliver Coppard.

Best of luck to all,
NOC

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http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/2015guide/

mikems wrote:I expect their servers are being overwhelmed.

If turnout is up, then we can be hopeful, imo. Last time tories got 36.7 of 65.5 turnout, with tories turning out in large numbers. But if turnout is 80%, and their current polling rarely higher than 35%, they will need to increase their absolute vote totals by large margins; yet there seems little chance of that, with the new cohorts of voters being less likely to vote tory than older voters.

And, of course, this increase is likely to be the return of Labour supporters to the polls after sitting out the last election in large numbers.

frightful_oik wrote:working for me cJA