StoptheTories.vote withdraws its tactical Labour recommendation for Exmouth

Posted on

StoptheVote.org, a major tactical voting site, has TAKEN DOWN its recommendation of a Labour vote in Exmouth & East Exeter. It now says its tactical advice is ‘COMING SOON: We’re waiting until more polling is released to confirm our advice here.’

It explains: ‘We’ve manually set advice for this constituency because as an Independent was in second place last time, it is not yet clear where those supporters will go’. In other words, the old advice was based on automatically applying national trends without proper local data.

Meanwhile Electoral Calculus, the site which takes into account local information, estimates that the race is incredibly close between the Tory (32.6%), Paul Arnott for the Lib Dems (29.8) and Labour (21.4). It has reduced the chance of the Tory winning to 54%, increased the Lib Dems’ to 34%, and puts Labour’s chance on 10%.

Some facts on this constituency:

  1. 78 per cent of the old East Devon seat is in it – but some extra Exeter wards have been added.
  2. In the old East Devon seat, the Lib Dems were always second until 2010 – Labour were never in contention.
  3. Claire Wright (Independent) took over as the main challenger in 2015, 2017 and 2019, squeezing the Lib Dem, Labour and Green votes down to a very small level.
  4. In 2019, Claire got 40.4%, Labour 4.5%, Lib Dems 2.8%, Greens 1.1%. Claire is supporting Paul Arnott.
  5. In local elections in the new constituency in 2023-4, Lib Dems have gained 39.5% of the votes, Labour 13%, Greens 6% – while Tories got 37.5% – confirming that this is a tight Tory:Lib Dem race.
  6. Labour have just confirmed that the constituency is NOT a battleground seat for them – their members are advised to canvass in the nearest battleground seat in Plymouth.
  7. Labour’s 2019 candidate has left the party and is standing as an Independent, so their vote will be further split.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized.

3 thoughts on “StoptheTories.vote withdraws its tactical Labour recommendation for Exmouth”

    Liz Lawley said:
    June 9, 2024 at 9:33 pm

    This is sheer spin, suggesting that Stop the Tories changed its support from Labour to LibDem when what they are actually saying is that they don’t know where Claire Wright’s previous support will go . They are NOT saying that it will go to the LibDems. Their site states: ‘We’ve manually set advice for this constituency because the independent came second last time, it is not yet clear where those supporters will go’. Your ‘facts’ are subjective supposition based on bias as a personal friend of Claire Wright and Paul Arnott rather than on objective data and they should not be spun as such.

    You say that in local elections in the new constituency in 2023 – 2024, LibDems gained 39.5% of the vote, Labour 13% and Greens 6% with Tories on 37.5%, using these figures to frame the coming election as a tight LibDem v Tory race. But these ‘facts’ are not from the 2024 elections results across EEE which, importantly, include the Police and Crime Commissioner elections; these show a very different picture (in Exeter: Labour 15,742, Con 9,785, LibDem 5,888; in EDDC Con 12,530, Labour 6,591, LibDem 6,286).

    You also say that Labour has just confirmed that EEE is not a battleground seat for them and that their members are asked to canvas in Plymouth, the nearest battleground seat. But you ignore the fact that EEE isn’t a battleground seat for the LibDems either, with all their resources being directed towards Honiton and Sidmouth.

    Finally, you use the fact that Labour’s 2019 candidate has left the party and is standing as an Independent, suggesting this will further split the Labour vote. It really is a quite an assumption, made without any supporting evidence, that Labour supporters, who want a Keir Starmer led government, will instead decide to vote for an independent.

    Like

    Reply
      Martin Shaw responded:
      June 10, 2024 at 4:04 pm

      Hi Liz, I’m afraid you didn’t read my post carefully. I simply said that Stop the Vote had withdrawn its original recommendation for Labour – because they hadn’t realised that an Independent, Claire Wright, had come second in the old East Devon constituency (3/4 of the new one) in 2019. Obviously, like most of the polling organisations they used, they hadn’t looked closely at the local situation. As YouGov have said to me, their projections, designed to predict the national distribution of seats, may not work well in “unique” constituencies. It is obvious that using the tiny votes of the opposition parties (ALL of whom lost their deposits in 2019) was not a viable basis for a projection in 2024 – but that’s what most of the pollsters were doing! Stop the Vote, like Electoral Calculus, have now acknowledged that was wrong.

      My figures for the local elections are correct and confirm that the Lib Dems have much stronger support than Labour or the Greens in EEE. The Police and Crime elections saw a very low turnout and are not recorded on a constituency basis, so they don’t tell us very much. Moreover many may have voted Labour in the PCC because they had been the main opposition in previous PCC elections – I did so myself – and that will not necessarily translate into the General Election.

      I’m afraid the fact that Dan Wilson has left Labour IS relevant. He was the only Labour councillor in the East Devon part of the constituency as well as its 2019 candidate. It just underlines that Labour is still weak here, as the selection of an inexperienced candidate and the instruction to campaign in Plymouth also shows. I support Paul Arnott because not only is he the candidate most likely to beat the Tory; he is also a vastly experienced campaigner who led the fight to end Tory control of East Devon District Council and has steered a Lib Dem-Green-Independent coalition, often with Labour support, for the last four years. Unlike Labour, he is campaigning strongly to win and I suspect that will sway voters.

      Like

      Reply

Leave a comment