Immigration or the War?

After the intial nearly-universal reaction that Labour's majority was cut by nearly 100 seats as a result of the war, a group of folks are now pushing back, led by the Guardian's Martin Kettle arguing that Labour's main problem is the disaffection of voters to the right, not the left. Now no doubt, Labour needs to watch their right flank, but methinks Mr. Kettle and Blair's staunchest backers aren't reading the data closely enough.

See this evidence, compiled by my fellow Seattle-ite Nick Beaudrot, where he analyzes the "Liberal Democratic" effect in all 31 Tory gains from Labour. Unfortunately, I can't repost Nick's excellent graphic, but the numbers he crunches indicate that of the 31, 18 were made possible by a swing from Labour to the Lib Dems - or to put it another way, the Labour to Liberal Democrat swing was larger than the Tory margin of victory. In other words, if Labour holds what - in this election, at least - was its left flank, it would theoretically have held 18 of the 31 gains. Thus only 13 of the 31 Tory gains from Labour can be attributed solely to a Labour to Tory swing.

As Nick summarizes:

Of the 31 Tory gains at the expense of Labour, votes that moved from Labourite candidates to Liberal Democrats represent the margin of victory in 18 seats. In Wimbledon, a first-time Green Party candidate ran; adding his votes to Labour along with the new Lib Dem voters would have been enough to keep the seat in Labour's hands. With 12 additional gains at the expense of Labour, the surge in Lib Dem voting is responsible for 30 of Labour's 47 losses.

As a side note - and I do not have the data to back this up one way or another - it seems that if Labour suffered any losses on its right flank (again, chiefly because of immigration), they could just as well as come in the form of the British National Party.

Comments

[Danno11]

Yeah, it's becoming more and more apparent that the Lib Dems are becoming the #2 party. Both the climate and the demographics favor them. If Labour doesn't take this opportunity to get its house in order (i.e. - dump Blair), they could find trouble on their left in the next cycle.

It's nice to see a nation where the climate tilts heavy left. Not that the U.S. tilts too far in either direction but still...

Cheers to your new blog.