UK 2015 General Election

[Jorick]

From my personal perspective, you're half-right about most stuff, but that's not exactly how it played out.

The core reason for the majority Conservative vote certainly was certainly not that they haven't pissed anyone off. They've pissed nigh on everyone but the wealthiest people in the country off. The reason was that lots of people view the left-leaning parties' economic policies as fiscally irresponsible at a time in which we're in horrific debt and are still running a deficit, and were thus absolutely terrified of a Labour-SNP coalition getting into power. Many voted Conservative as a "necessary evil" to avoid that, including myself. Their policies are brutal and harsh, and in my opinion are targeting the wrong areas, but they are a safe and secure method of cutting the deficit and fixing the economy.

The Lib Dems' decimation was largely because people were so scared of the financial policies of a Labour-SNP coalition that they somewhat-tactically voted Conservative instead, as only the Conservatives could challenge Labour in England and Wales. The Lib Dems' failure to capitalise on their place in the coalition to keep their campaign promises was, in my opinion, a smaller contributor, because many people realise that being the significantly weaker party in the coalition they couldn't do much, and they actually kept the Conservatives in check in many cases.

Labour shot themselves in the foot in two ways:
Firstly, by not campaigning hard enough in Scotland, not realising how influential the SNP have become since the independence referendum. They've always relied on Scotland being a stronghold for them, and losing that beheaded them.
Secondly, Labour actually said they would never coalition with the SNP, so their biggest failure was in the fact that voters in England and Wales didn't believe them. They don't view Ed Miliband or the Labour party as trustworthy.
I have no idea where you got the "Islamophobia" stuff being their biggest mistake from. ._. People with xenophobic leanings would never vote left-wing anyway, most likely.
But more than anything, it was the SNP that beheaded Labour, not anything Labour did themselves. Not just in taking all the Scottish seats, though. More importantly, the SNP very publicly and aggressively pushed for a coalition with Labour, despite Labour's protests, which scared the shit out of many people and is what caused the Conservative swing. Of course, this is exactly what the SNP wanted - to be utterly dominant in Scotland, but with the Conservatives in power in Westminster so they have a scapegoat for anything that goes wrong and an excuse to push for another referendum. They played it perfectly.

Yeah, not surprised I don't have the whole story. I've only watched a couple people talking about it on Youtube and read a few articles, and they generally harp on single issues with moderate to heavy bias, so of course I'd be missing some things. That was why I was very careful to qualify all my XD

Your explanation of how the Conservatives won makes a lot of sense, more than the idea that they won just by being the least stupid. This is the first time I've heard anyone mention fiscal responsibility as a major factor, because I guess my limited sources of information don't care or know much about economic issues.

The Lib Dems, yeah, guess they got shafted by the people voting Conservative for economic reasons and the SNP sweeping Scotland. I was under the impression that it was more people turning away from them than turning toward other options, but your explanation seems logical to me.

I got the idea of the "Islamophobia" thing being a major contributor from commentators who were extraordinarily pissed off about the dude basically promising to crap on civil rights by making one ill-defined (so poorly defined that even legitimate criticisms of Islam could be deemed "Islamophobia") type of prejudice a far more serious crime than run of the mill hate speech. It seemed to be to be less about xenophobia, more about concern for freedom of speech staying intact, but of course any xenophobes would also latch on to not liking the idea. I've met and talked to quite a few people who vote left in the US but are pretty xenophobic, so the two are not mutually exclusive in my mind.

Again though, your explanation fills in a lot of gaps and makes perfect sense. I knew that one issue wasn't at all the only reason they lost seats, but I suppose the disproportionate focus the subject had in my limited reading on recent UK politics (largely because seeing a headline about it was the thing that got me interested in wtf was going on over there) made it seem a far bigger issue than it actually was. So thanks for the explanations, definitely cleared things up. I suppose this should be a lesson for me to not think I know what the hell I'm talking about just because I did a few hours of light research. :P

 

[Halo]

Yeah, not surprised I don't have the whole story. I've only watched a couple people talking about it on Youtube and read a few articles, and they generally harp on single issues with moderate to heavy bias, so of course I'd be missing some things. That was why I was very careful to qualify all my XD

Your explanation of how the Conservatives won makes a lot of sense, more than the idea that they won just by being the least stupid. This is the first time I've heard anyone mention fiscal responsibility as a major factor, because I guess my limited sources of information don't care or know much about economic issues.

The Lib Dems, yeah, guess they got shafted by the people voting Conservative for economic reasons and the SNP sweeping Scotland. I was under the impression that it was more people turning away from them than turning toward other options, but your explanation seems logical to me.

I got the idea of the "Islamophobia" thing being a major contributor from commentators who were extraordinarily pissed off about the dude basically promising to crap on civil rights by making one ill-defined (so poorly defined that even legitimate criticisms of Islam could be deemed "Islamophobia") type of prejudice a far more serious crime than run of the mill hate speech. It seemed to be to be less about xenophobia, more about concern for freedom of speech staying intact, but of course any xenophobes would also latch on to not liking the idea. I've met and talked to quite a few people who vote left in the US but are pretty xenophobic, so the two are not mutually exclusive in my mind.

Again though, your explanation fills in a lot of gaps and makes perfect sense. I knew that one issue wasn't at all the only reason they lost seats, but I suppose the disproportionate focus the subject had in my limited reading on recent UK politics (largely because seeing a headline about it was the thing that got me interested in wtf was going on over there) made it seem a far bigger issue than it actually was. So thanks for the explanations, definitely cleared things up. I suppose this should be a lesson for me to not think I know what the hell I'm talking about just because I did a few hours of light research. :P

My objective was to clear things up and offer my perspective, not to seem like I was telling you you're clueless, so I'm glad it came across that way. ^^ I get involved with plenty of discussions on American political issues, even though not living there means my perspective is limited at best. When the US election rolls around in 2016, I'd love to hear your more informed view on things in the same way. :)

I imagine your sources were slightly left-biased, because typically (in my view) left-leaning voters in the UK are focused far more on social than economic issues - hence their desire to see increased spending (and their loathing of right-wing cuts to spending), which is obviously understandable, but isn't currently a viable economic plan in many peoples' views (hence a swing towards the Conservatives). But to be honest, the fact that my perspective on things is almost entirely based on the parties' economic policy is probably because I'm right-leaning - it would be interesting to hear a similar explanation from a strongly left-leaning voter, and see if they believed social issues such as Miliband's Islamophobia cock-up were more relevant in the result.

In regards to the "xenophobic people still vote left" point - of course they do, but I was speaking in generalisations. Remember that even our right-wing parties in the UK are far left of even the Democrats in the US. For example, UKIP is considered socially very right-wing just because their primary concern is cutting down on immigration. The very idea of cutting immigration is enough to make you right-wing here, so a xenophobic person would generally be considered automatically right-leaning. Based on my limited understanding of US politics, it's rather a different story there.

 

[Halo]

Note: I've made an edit to the OP and have added in a query about people's opinions of the FPTP system, considering these statistics:

Conservatives - 36.9% of vote -> 50.9% of seats
Labour - 30.4% of vote -> 35.7% of seats
UKIP - 12.6% of vote -> 0.2% of seats
Lib Dems - 7.9% of vote -> 1.2% of seats
SNP - 4.7% of vote -> 8.6% of seats
Green - 3.8% of vote -> 0.2% of seats

 

[Brovo]

Note: I've made an edit to the OP and have added in a query about people's opinions of the FPTP system, considering these statistics:

FPTP made sense when it was employed before the advent of computers, networking, and constantly live updating news networks. Now that we have all of those things in abundance and to such a degree that any idiot with a keyboard can do data entry, there's little reason not to switch to STV and get a more representative government via eliminating tactical voting. You still won't entirely eliminate things like gerrymandering, but at least you'll make voting for parties an easier process.

Otherwise, the current setup of having 650 constituencies is preferable to a proportional system, as it holds 650 simultaneous elections to vote in a specific person to office rather than a party. This person has to convince you why you should vote for them. Ergo if you voted for Bob of the Conservative Party, you're voting for Bob specifically: His party affiliation is secondary. This forces that person to become accountable, so if he gets the majority of his constituency (only a few thousand people I might add, so it's easy to swing votes away from him) to vote for him on the premise of lowering only certain kinds of taxes, and ends up supporting the lowering of all taxes, he can be held accountable to that, hung from the political rafters, and replaced with a different candidate next election. This is preferable to proportional representation, where you vote for a party and have no ability to control who gets to represent you within that party.

That's my five cents anyway. STV + Constituencies = Ideal System of the modern day.