Crewe and Nantwich

As is my wont from time to time, I poke my nose in the politics of other countries. I don't spend any money on influencing the outcome but I do like to watch. So the by-election in Crewe and Nantwich looks to be quite interesting given the national scene in the UK. Basically, Gordon Brown seems to have been caught completely unpreparedby the British public in bed with a naked recession and he had no protection at all. Meanwhile, Nick Clegg is still learning to lead without his stabilisers on the bicycle of the Lib Dems and David Cameron has suddenly found himself faced with the prospect of being behaving like the leader of a major political party with a decent chance of being in government somewhat ahead of schedule. You can peruse the full line up if you wish but the three main parties are where the real action is as per usual.

Last time out in 2005 the final % results were
Labour 48.8
Conserveratives 32.6
Lib Dems 18.6

A shift or swing as they like to call it over there of 9% from Labour to Tory would mean Labour on 39.8% and Conservative 41.6%. However, many people - core Labour people - are likely to find voting for the Tories a bridge too far, and might either stay home or seek out a temporary safe haven in the Lib Dems. Indeed, with the Labour vote nationally appearing to be in free fall, it is just possible that some Labour voters might even decide that the only way to stop the Tories romping home is to vote LibDems. It is alternately possible that if the battle is seen as a straight choice between supporting the government or giving it a bloody nose then the Lib Dems might be squeezed out completely. With that in mind, I've got two outcomes that might result from each of the above scenarios

Scenario (A)

Labour suffer a collapse but as it is a collapse in the core vote many can't bring themselves to vote Tory so they temporarily jump to the LibDems, in fact the Labour campaign doesn't get people to vote Labour but it is effective in stopping people from voting Tory

Labour 34.8
Conserveratives 38.6
Lib Dems 26.6

Scenario (B)

Labour suffer a significant drop but the core vote holds and many including some who previously voted Lib Dems see the risk nationally of a Tory win (especially if it means an overall majority for the Conservatives) so they vote Labour. The Labour campaign gets people to vote Labour but it is still not effective in stopping middle ground people from voting Tory.

Labour 39.8
Conservatives 44.6
Lib Dems 15.6

We'll know tonight. And there is always scenario (C), (D) and so on and so forth.

Local Elections England/Wales - how bad?

Really bad, really, really bad. The beeb are still insisting on going more and more down the road graphically orientated tom foolery with Jeremy Vine when what they really need are Charlie McCreevy and Ivan Yates arguing over the direction of the transfers of the Ballydehob local bigwig on the anti fish scale tax party.

One problem for me is that they only report seats gains and losses not the % that a party got in which council area. With 1st past the post it is possible that a disaster decline can be masked or that a minor gain can translate into a large seat gain. The national vote share projection is some help but for the really nerdy amongst us (I'm saying us so I must be including myself in that number) we want to see how the % vote has changed in each council. And nowhere on the beeb site can I find that. And they appear to be completely at a loss as to how to report on the Mayoral count with the only semi useful quote being "With 27% of votes counted in each of the 14 electoral areas - Mr Johnson has the lead in 9 while Labour's Ken Livingstone is ahead in five." how big are the 9 areas compared to the 5 and ahead by what margin! God help me but with a few dozen Tallymen we'd have a projected first count at this stage on 27% of the vote counted, and we'd have some idea where the 2nd choices were going. And this in the birthplace of parliamentary democracy.

Update: according to the Guardian blog there are screens at the count centres that are giving the 1st preferences and 2nd choices as they are counted. So why is no one reporting the actual numbers? Do they think people can't understand them?