

Mapping Scotland's Dramatic Shift in Political Geography - jjar
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-scotland-32621862

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5h
As an English person residing in England, This is very much the most
interesting story from this election.

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_petronius
It's going to be really interesting to see what happens at Holyrood next year,
and what the result of the promised 2017 EU referendum is. Although I am
sceptical that we'd see independence before 2020 for Scotland, a big
constitutional shakeup does seem to be on the cards.

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riffraff
what is "holyrood next year"?

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Sulfolobus
Elections for the devolved Scottish Parliament.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Parliament_general_el...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Parliament_general_election,_2016)

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erikb
As a German I feel strange seeing a nationalist party win. Is it reasonable to
worry here? Don't know much about Scotland.

*edit: deleted a sub comment after being shown that I misunderstood something.

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rossng
The SNP are nothing to worry about, really. They're centre-left and moderate.
They might campaign for another referendum but it would be silly to class them
as xenophobic.

However, from a technology perspective the new Tory majority _really_ worries
me. They have no understanding of tech. They want to reintroduce sweeping
surveillance legislation that was blocked by the Lib Dems in the previous
government.

They also want to ban encryption (!) and will continue to attempt to censor
the internet.

They will also likely fail to reform the current system that sees people being
arrested for making jokes on Twitter (or, more widely, our terrible libel
laws). They also have no real interest in ensuring widespread rollout of high-
speed fibre broadband. They'll pay lip service to it, but that's easy to do.

They are also unconcerned about data protection and will likely continue to
allow more care.data-style schemes with little effective oversight.

The only upsides: GDS and open data initiatives will probably survive.

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lordnacho
What I want to know is how all those polls were wrong. The closest I can get
is there's a systematic "shy conservative" bias.

It's certainly not a sample size problem. I trust the pollsters understand
statistics, and this seems to be the most polled election ever.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Note that the same polls were all pretty accurate in regards to the result in
Scotland, which makes the errors even odder (and gives a bit of support to the
"shy conservative" theory).

Possibly the highly promoted guides to tactical voting provided by the right-
wing press had a disproportionate impact on the marginal seats?

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aidos
How does the "shy conservative" come into play in telephone polls, for
example? I guess it may well, but it seems a little strange.

Is there something where on the day people swing more towards the safety of
the incumbent? This study seems to suggest the opposite should true [0], at
least when it comes to undecided voters.

It's definitely an interesting question. How were the polls _so_ wrong? Maybe
in the closely contested seats the minor parties split labour? But why didn't
the polls show that?

I'd love to paw through the data. Really need to look at it on an electorate
by electorate basis to see the variation between the parties (opinion vs
actual).

[0]
[http://www.pollingreport.com/incumbent.htm](http://www.pollingreport.com/incumbent.htm)

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ZeroGravitas
The basic theory is that people are embarrassed to vote in their own selfish
self-interest. There are some who claim you get more conservative voters with
online polls, because there's no human being there to judge them.

I'd always heard that the undecided break towards the incumbent. I believe all
the polls took that into account already though, and still got it wrong.

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vixen99
Oddly enough I would rather not have someone patronizingly voting for what
they believe is in my best interests. How do they know what that might be? I
would hope that people would always vote in their own 'selfish' self-interest.

~~~
aidos
I might vote for something that's not directly in my self-interest, believing
it's more in the collective interest. I'm part of the collective and I feel a
more even society is in my interests, even if that means I personally might
not be as well off as I could be. That's really not patronizing.

Though you could argue that I've done it for my own self-interests in the long
term (who knows when you or your kids might rely on essential services) :)

EDIT Also, it's pretty obvious that there are choices that are better for some
groups of people (that aren't me). I don't know who "you" are, but there are
voting choices that I can make that will help those classes of people, you may
or may not be among them. I resent the idea that I'm being patronizing by
making that choice (though in the strictest sense of the word "patron" maybe
you're right).

~~~
vixen99
'Collective' suggests to me we're not going to agree. Patronizing in this
context only means making assumptions (likely to be unwarranted I’d argue)
about what someone else wants. But who is the 'someone' affected by a vote in
a general election? How many people? To what extent? What about unknown/known
effects on other people who you do not have in mind? You cannot know and the
assumptions pile up. So much easier to vote on what you really do know to the
extent that you can know or rationalize. As you say, we can surely agree that
it isn’t always our immediate concerns that best serve our interests as in the
simple example of imagining ourselves out of work or needing medical
attention. As you say, this benefits everyone – point being that we also are
‘everyone’.

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ilamont
Why were the Liberal Democrats so strong in rural/highland areas up until now?

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petercooper
The Liberal Democrats have always (well, till now) been at their strongest in
progressive rural areas that have little to no urban blight (so, much of
Scotland, much of the South West, parts of East Anglia, Northumberland, mid
Wales).

Now for my personal opinion.. I would credit this to them being the most
"centre" of the parties - they're progressive without being overtly socialist,
and that appeals to the "hey, I'm still cool" element of the rural middle
class that still likes their cars, village fetes, and horsey stuff, but is
also pro gay marriage, pro equality and pro welfare.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "I would credit this to them being the most "centre" of the parties"

I thought the liberal democrats (at least before the coalition) were the most
left leaning of the major parties.

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buro9
Labour are the most left leaning, but still kinda centrist. Liberal Democrats
are relatively centrist for the major parties but still quite right:

This sums it up best... the UK is mostly a right leaning authoritarian
country, we vote on the relative differences between parties rather than the
overall thing.

[http://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2015](http://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2015)

~~~
thomasfoster96
Is it just me or does politicalcompass.org seem to skew everything towards
right wing authoritarianism?

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buro9
I think it's just the world we live in. The left and more liberal options
exist but none of them are mainstream and we mentally re-draw the extents of
the political compass to cover the politics we experience (the major parties).

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petercooper
That should be how the political compass is drawn since it is based on human
experience, no?

I think that chart is crazy though. The Conservatives are far from a far right
party. Christ, if you dropped the Conservatives in America, they'd be
considered a right bunch of commies - even the Democrats would be off the
scale to the right by that chart.

~~~
masklinn
> That should be how the political compass is drawn since it is based on human
> experience, no?

AFAIK, the political compass attempts to assess an absolute scale across world
politics, not local choices.

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thomasfoster96
Still a bit odd the concentration of western political parties in the right-
wing authoritarian section of the graph - unless there's a whole lot of
countries with extreme left-wing governments which are very pro-choice, which
I highly doubt.

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masklinn
> Still a bit odd the concentration of western political parties in the right-
> wing authoritarian section of the graph

Dunno, if you consider that much of the anglosphere is patterning itself more
and more after US politics which lives solely in the top-right corner of the
top-right quadrant it makes sense that they would coalesce there. And "labour"
parties have definitely been shifting their stances towards US dem
inspiration.

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thomasfoster96
I'd still say the UK and Australia are a fair way away from the American
parties (particularly the republicans).

