More Thoughts on that Very Odd Election Result in May

There is much wisdom to be found in the letters pages of newspapers.  Some of you will recall how some months ago I wondered if the election was that much of a Tory victory, or if the majority reflected a real swing:

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/05/i-thought-i-would-try-some-amateur-election-analysis-here-partly-for-my-own-amusement-and-instruction-and-probably-not-at-a.html

Now, Mr Kenneth Jarrett, from Bournville in Birmingham, stimulated by recent stories about the Electoral Commission looking into Tory election spending,���.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3452815/The-Tories-probed-elections-watchdog-allegations-wrongly-declared-hotel-bills-election-battle-stop-Nigel-Farage-entering-Parliament.html

 ���.wrote yesterday (Tuesday 26th April 2016)  in the Daily Mail���s letters page: ���THE special investigation (Mail) into the Conservative Party's campaign funding is all the more revealing when one notes that the Liberal Democrat Party's seismic collapse to 6.8 per cent occurred between 2010 and 2014 ��� the EU Parliament Election ��� and flat-lined after that until the 2015 UK Parliament Election.

���The returns of the 2015 election reveal that the Conservative Party was rejected by 75 per cent of registered voters, and that of the 26 seats gained by Conservative candidates from Lib Dems, many fell as 'windfall fruit', five of them being so marginal that their combined increase in support from 2010 to 2015 was only 1,794 votes: Eastbourne (+ 289), Lewes (+ 805), Sutton & Cheam (+ 184), Torbay (+ 503) and St Ives (+ 591). So that's the margin of Conservative 'success'.

���If one accepts the view that the absolute majority consisted of windfalls gained by the Conservatives, and discounts them, in the rest of the election the Tories suffered a net loss of two seats from 2010: UKIP retained one and Labour gained one. The Conservatives gained nine seats from Labour, which gained ten from the Conservatives. It's clear that the Liberal Democrat Party candidates entered the election like deflated blow-up dolls. The party paid the price for having entered into a Coalition arrangement with the Conservative Party, while the Conservatives paid the price for misleading eurosceptics in both parties by claiming it could change treaty obligations and reduce migration. Of the 26 seats the Liberal Democrats lost, the swing to UKIP accounted for roughly 43.7 per cent of the party's collapse, to the Green Party 23.4 per cent, to Labour 20.2 per cent, but to the Conservatives only 12.6 per cent. This indicates that the absolute majority achieved by the Conservatives was largely due to the performance of the opposition parties rather than the campaign put together by election 'guru' Lynton Crosby. The majority appears more like a mirage of nil substance than a mandate for���Government.���

I���d say Mr Jarrett was almost right. But what if Mr Crosby and the Tory strategists understood that this was roughly what was going to happen (I think they underestimated its effect, as I am sure they never really meant to get an overall majority) and concentrated on winning a very small number of votes in a few crucial seats?

In any case, the oddness of the result still requires a full-scale academic analysis, and I long to see one. I shall also be watching with interest to see what the Electoral Commission does.