We’ve all read the newspapers when they say that Nick Clegg will be bludgeoned if he stands again in 2015. We’ve all read that he has no hope of keeping his seat of Sheffield Hallam as everyone hates both the Lib Dems and him personally. We’ve all heard from the Labour activists who say that Clegg is just finished and that even if he waved a magic wand he wouldn’t be able to survive. His future in Westminster politics is more over than my endless and fruitless pursuit of women but is the rhetoric accurate?
Well let us look at this handy pie chart I saw of how Sheffield Hallam voted on Thursday night:
Doesn’t fully endorse the popular rhetoric does it?
However who cares about the truth when we have a story that sounds an awful lot better than the truth?
Two open ended questions with no answers. What English. Anyway I just wanted to point out that Nick Clegg isn’t finished and that the people of his constituency are still backing his party to a comfortable degree. What we saw on Thursday is a lot of Lib Dem councillors in seats where there is a sitting Lib Dem MP did ok and nowhere near as poorly as elsewhere. Look at Eastleigh with Chris Huhne, Colchester will Bob Russell, Portsmouth with Mike Hancock etc…
I’m not saying everything is grand because it clearly isn’t but don’t write off Nick Clegg yet. The people who voted for him directly in 2010 haven’t all turned their back on his party and that is important. The YouGov Poll which is always awful says that the Lib Dems are hovering at around 8-9% whereas the popular vote on Thursday put it at 16%. Maybe it is time for people to laugh at and mock the YouGov Poll just like women to do me when I try to talk to them.
Sad times…
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[…] How Nick Clegg’s Sheffield Hallam constituency voted on Thursday by Neil Monnery on The Rambles of Neil Monnery. Hallam’s healthy Lib Dem […]
Sadly for Mr Clegg this chart is largely meaningless. Sheffield Hallam won’t exist by the next election, and if you run the numbers based on the new boundaries it’s a lot less inspiring:
http://www.sheffieldpolitics.com/home/2012/5/6/lib-dems-circulate-meaningless-pie-chart-to-prove-nicks-elec.html
It would be interesting if the same analysis was given to David Cameron’s seat and the same extrapolation applied. Also with FPTP, local variations and incumbency need to be taken into account which is something the Lib Dem doom-mongerers (and the broad brush YouGov polling) wilfully ignore. Not to mention the extreme hard work that goes in on the ground.