538 says Tories 299, Labour 199, LibDems 120
Nate Silver, the stats guru who runs 538, is finalising his predictions – and it’s looking good for LibDems and Conservatives. Less so for Labour.
Unlike other pollsters, Silver makes his analysis using multiple polls and good judgement of how much a constituency could swing from the last election. He is unnervingly accurate.
29 Apr 2010
Political football
Neat idea from the Whitechapel Gallery – they’ve organised a three-sided football match, played on a hexagonal pitch with the teams representing the three main parties. Just don’t tell Plaid Cymru or the SNP…
29 Apr 2010
Free Shoreditch
27 Apr 2010
The hipster marginals?
With political certainties quickly unravelling around us, politics is in danger of becoming momentarily cool. And if something is about to become momentarily cool, then you can bet your last pair of skinny jeans that it’s going to be swarmed over by a load of hipsters.
Could a group whose raison d’etre is to divorce themselves from such lame concerns as the rest of society have an important part to play in ushering in the brave new world of multi-party democracy? If they decide it’s cool enough, they just might.
Hipsters tend to live in solid Labour territory (Rents are cheap; living nextdoor to the underclass is cool). But in 2010 there is no such thing. Seats like Holburn & St Pancras (home of the student hip), and Hackney North & Stoke Newington (home of the ageing hip) need a 10-12% swing away from Labour if they are to fall to the new LibDem order. These numbers would once have seemed insurmountable, but Cleggphoria and an increase in the number of young voters make them feasible. Even a 15% swing in Hackney South and Shoreditch might not be impossible.
Add in the influence hipsters might have in preventing Labour from reclaiming Bethnal Green and Bow from Respect, and you could have an electoral earthquake on your hands: Labour locked out of it’s London heartlands, and a liberal consensus dominating British politics.
All of this assumes, of course, that the young and hip will naturally gravitate to the Lib Dems. Perhaps the biggest danger to this is that Cleggphoria has made his party just a bit too cool. If the Lib Dems go mainstream, the hipster may be forced to vote for an even more alternative party just to stay ahead of the curve. But if they can get over their nausea at the thought voting the same way as a lot of people less edgy than themselves, they might find it a price worth paying for a more liberal, and lets face it, more hip society. Clegg should issue this rallying call before he jumps the shark: Hipsters of London, unite! You have nothing to lose but your cool.
27 Apr 2010
What Can The Matter Be?
Some days you really do just want to start worshiping the internets, and today is one of ‘em. For one of the best music blogs there is, Delicious Scopitone, has released another fantastic free compilation of hazy, dreamy lost-pop songs. It comes with the strangest feeling that we’ve heard these songs before, a kind of creeping, nostalgic, washed-out déjà-vu…
Get it here.
26 Apr 2010
Daily Show takes on the UK General Election. We're doing it wrong.
The Daily Show, shown weekday evenings on More 4 at 8:30pm, has a fabulous feature on the first leaders debate.
Whoops. No longer embeddable.
Here’s Channel 4’s On Demand link (It’s right at the beginning, don’t worry.)
26 Apr 2010
A smarter pollster says that a LibDem sweep would devastate Labour more than Conservatives
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com has taken a look at Labour incumbents after a LibDem sweep and it doesn’t look pretty for them.
Silver says that UK pollsters have been calculating their sums wrong:
[T]hey are based on the idea of a uniform national swing, i.e., that if Labour finishes 7 points below their standing from the previous election in 2005, their share of the vote will drop by 7 points in each individual district (better known as ‘constituencies’ in the U.K.).
I’ve designed an alternative approach which, while also based on fairly simple assumptions, is potentially more robust. The approach works by assigning shares of one party’s 2005 vote to another.
A 10% swing towards LibDem from Labour and Conservative could result in
| Conservative | 276 | +78 |
| Labour | 218 | -138 |
| LibDems | 123 | +61 |
| Others | 15 | +3 |
| Northern Ireland | 18 | 0 |
A 20% swing towards LibDem from Labour and Conservative could result in
| Conservative | 194 | -4 |
| Labour | 154 | -202 |
| LibDems | 272 | +210 |
| Others | 12 | 0 |
| Northern Ireland | 18 | 0 |
In general, however, Labour backers should not take too much confidence from uniform swing calculations: they have been badly wrong in the past and there is some evidence that they may be badly wrong again. Particularly if Labour’s vote were to wind up in the mid-20s, its very hard to see how they could thread the needle in such a way that the outcome wouldn’t be devastating to them.
26 Apr 2010
Whale Watching Cancelled; How Come That Blood?
MP3: How Come That Blood?
NYC-based proto-folk innovator Sam Amidon is one of the many with touring plans grounded by the volcano Eyjafjallajökull in recent weeks; but Amidon, unlike some English tabloids, could never see Iceland as a villain. Amidon is one of the key players in the Bedroom Community scene, led by esteemed producer Valgeir Sigurðsson. The label’s Whale Watching tour (also set to feature mercurial composer Nico Muhly, Ben Frost, and Sigurðsson himself) was due to arrive at London’s Barbican last week but has been ashed off after months of meticulous planning.
Lucky then that we have Amidon’s latest album “I See The Sign” to chase away the volcano blues. Another wonderfully natural combination of traditional folk music and striking contemporary arrangements, “I See A Sign” is one of the essential records of 2010 so far. Opening track “How Come That Blood?” is a dark tale of murder and confession told over shuffling rhythms and wandering string arrangements, and a perfect introduction to Amidon’s world.
Listen to works by the whole Bedroom Community on their MySpace.
23 Apr 2010
Incoming Transmissions
The National Student Newspaper have released their second Incoming Transmissions MP3 compilation. It’s another survey of weird and wonderful bands from all over the world, and it’s the right price – yours today for £0.00.
22 Apr 2010
It's Russian Roulette: Seat by Seat statistics for LibDems over Labour and Conservatives
US political statistics site Five Thirty Eight has taken a look at the 42 Labour seats and 40 Conservative seats that Liberal Democrats are targeting.
Five Thirty Eight’s verdict;
If the swing manifests in marginal consituencies where the Lib Dems have an existing base of support upon which to build, they could pick up quite a number of seats. However, if the swing simply pulls away support from one of the larger parties in seats where the Lib Dems have no real shot of victory, the upshot will be for the Tories or Labour.
Translation: Russian Roulette
22 Apr 2010
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
- Summer Camp: Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days
- A unique collection of photos of Edwardian Londoners
- Diary of the shy Londoner
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
- An interview with Desiree Akhavan
- Could red kites be London's next big nature success story?
- The best church names in London, and where they come from
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
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