Landslide for Labour. Freefall for the Conservatives. But now that we’ve had time to chew over the results, what analysis have we missed?
Just the beginning for the Greens
The Greens won four seats: beating Labour in progressive, urban England and striking into Conservative heartland in Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire. And it seems as though these four might just be the beginning. In Bristol East the Greens mounted good challenge to Labour, who held the seat with a 14 point majority.
And then there’s Huddersfield, Sheffield, and Hackney: areas with sizeable Green representation at a council level, and now, it seems, a decent showing at a parliamentary level. Labour could find itself on the backfoot here.
In elections gone by it was often hard to discern where, besides Brighton and Bristol and maybe even Norwich, the Greens were in with a chance. Now we know.
Where will Reform look next?
Reform came second in a litany of Labour-won seats. In a number they split the vote on the right and displaced the Conservatives in brutal fashion. The party's five wins will guarantee it a presence in the media, unlike Ukip after the 2015 election. But the future for Britain's right is uncertain from here. What if Reform hung around rather than fold into the Conservatives (or fade into obscurity)?
Where might the party look for further gains?
These are seats where Reform came second to Labour, with a fifth of what otherwise would have been Conservative votes coming their way. Farage was more likeable than Sunak among the Tory base by a sizeable margin. It is not inconceivable that the Conservatives might cleave to Reform's platform if they intend to beat Labour. It's in these seats where Reform's future looks bright.
The unlikely crossover of Reform and the Greens
This is an odd one. In Sheffield the Reform Party stood aside for the Social Democratic Party (its corrupted imitation, of course) in this election. But the SDP performed appallingly. So who filled the void left by a hollow SDP and an absent Reform? ...The Greens?
This was a safe Labour hold. But in Heeley there was no Reform candidate. I forecasted what would have happened had Reform stood: the only party to wildly overperform - getting more than double the predicted share - was the Greens.
Here is the interesting thing. Imagine there are two types of median voter: Steady as She Goes versus Shake Things Up. As members of the Shake Things Up club, it's not inconceivable that prospective Reform voters might have been tempted by the Greens in lieu of a Reform candidate.
Corbyn’s win was sensational - no, really
Ahead of the election I said Corbyn was down, but not out: his win would be unlikely but not impossible. Nevertheless, his victory in Islington is sensational.
Generally speaking, long-standing incumbents contesting their constituencies as independents end up with a touch under half of their previous vote. So if you got 66 per cent last time, you would end up with around a third of the vote this time.
Corbyn won 49 per cent of the vote in Islington North, the equivalent to 77 per cent of what he got in 2019. That is impressive.
Tracking Tory overperformance
While Britain Predicts beat al the competing forecast models, in the seats there was a great deal of variation. The Conservatives outperformed expectations in much of rural England, but they underperformed everywhere else.
In the Yorkshire coalfields, West Yorkshire, Wales, Somerset and Oxfordshire, they did worse than expected. In the urban north they were supplanted by Reform in a bigger way than polls predicted - the urban Tory vote appears more willing to countenance Reform than its rural counterparts. Why?
In Scotland, pro-union tactical voting saw them cling on to most of their seats. But in North Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Essex and especially in north London, they did miles better than expected. Sunak was the biggest overperformer of the whole night. London was one of the worst areas of missed scores for Labour - losing out in nailed-on Chingford and Sidcup and Pinner. In fact, across Greater London, Labour’s own vote went down - by a margin of five percentage points.
[See also: Labour cannot save Northern Ireland]
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