Saturday 9 May 2015

An uncomfortable truth: Labour's shock net gain of seats from the Tories

The Telegraph's The Politics Blog is claiming this about Labour (my emphasis):
The party has faced wipeout in Scotland, traditionally a stronghold of Labour - with the SNP winning 56 out of 59 Scottish seats. At the same time, failure to gain seats from the Conservatives in England and Wales has led to the party gaining just 232 seats - 50 short of some predictions.
However, the results show that although Labour lost eight of their seats to the Tories, they actually gained ten other seats from them. This helpful BBC graphic illustrates how the seats changed hands:


That is, Labour had a net gain of two seats from the Tories.

In fact, Labour's vote share increased in this election, going from 29.0% in 2010 under Gordon Brown's leadership to 30.4% in 2015 under Ed Miliband's leadership.

The reason Labour didn't win as a result of this is because of Gordon Brown's disastrous loss of 91 seats in the 2010 general election. Ed Miliband needed to win far more than two seats from the Tories.

But as uncomfortable as it is for the right-wing Telegraph, Labour actually gained seats from the Tories in this election.


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