The United Kingdom 2010 General Election will go down in history as one of the most volatile elections of modern times, at different points during the last five weeks, all three major parties topped the opinion polls; a minor party looked like it was going to make a significant breakthrough; the election count was one of the longest ever and was only finally concluded with six legal actions, three re-run elections and the United Kingdom remained without a new government for nearly a fortnight.
Various commentators have pointed to significant points during the campaign and before it as being the turning point of the election and academic studies have abounded on this matter.
The successful UKIP court case about the debates is often mentioned as having been pivotal in it's effect on the Conservative "nailed-on" majority. The BNP attentat and removal to no more than token position of Nick Griffin in January 2010 is mentioned by others as having had a powerful effect on White Working Class voters by replacing the shady racist image with a more respectable one of Civic Nationalism. The attempts at electoral alliances between fringe parties of the right (partially successful) and between various "socialist" candidates and the Green party (an acrimonious failure), meant that more candidates stood that at any time for years.
The debates with powerful performances in the first debate from Nick Clegg, in the second debate from Nigel Farage, the destruction of Vince Cable by Alistair Darling in the Chancellors Debate and Gordon Brown's crash and burn over Bigotgate in the third debate - certainly raised political interest and may well have led to the turnout being the highest since 1992.
The media had its influence as well, both in traditional and New Media forms, the Telegraph ran a series of rehashes of its expenses fraud campaign, culminating in the leak of additional MP's who were being investigated by the police and the outing of David Laws. The Grauniad attemped to back the Liberal Democrats but suffered from most of it's major columnist trying to issue cris du coeur for Labour. The Times solidily backed the Conservatives with just a hint of a wobble after the second debate. The Mail and Express concentrated their fire on hating everyone, before issuing a final call for a Conservative vote. The Redtops stuck to their guns, the Mirror for Labour, the Sun for the Tories and the Star for whoever hated Muslims the most this month. No one noticed what the Independent did.
Experiments by candidates in New Media varied from highly successful web sites, to very bland Facebook profiles (although some candidates claimed to have answered as many question from constituents by Facebook as by email) to some spectacular "pop-outs" usually on Twitter. Amazingly enough, the three major nominations for "Living Proof of Tuckers Law", Dorries, Hancock and Brown were all re-elected.
The final polls were in hindsight a disaster for the polling companies - with only the previous derided Opinium getting any measure of credibility out of them. The academic arguments over the whys and the wherefores of the errors went on well into 2011, but mainly concentrated on the overly low estimates for "the others" - the average had shown Labour and the Liberal Democrats on 27% and the Tories on 35%, not one of these figures turned out to be within the margin of error.
The actual night itself will go down in many political activists minds as one of complete horror. The high turnout caused immense problems at polling stations - only resolved by a late court order; many of the counts themselves were a farce, and the competitive coverage by the TV stations led to a number of mistakes partly by believing rumours from Twitter. Strangely enough, the "elephant in the room" of postal votes produced little more than a frisson of horror at the numbers rejected in some seats, although the small rash of arrests for personation on the day in three Birmingham seats caused both a problem for the BBC and two of the election petitions.
Various commentators have pointed to significant points during the campaign and before it as being the turning point of the election and academic studies have abounded on this matter.
The successful UKIP court case about the debates is often mentioned as having been pivotal in it's effect on the Conservative "nailed-on" majority. The BNP attentat and removal to no more than token position of Nick Griffin in January 2010 is mentioned by others as having had a powerful effect on White Working Class voters by replacing the shady racist image with a more respectable one of Civic Nationalism. The attempts at electoral alliances between fringe parties of the right (partially successful) and between various "socialist" candidates and the Green party (an acrimonious failure), meant that more candidates stood that at any time for years.
The debates with powerful performances in the first debate from Nick Clegg, in the second debate from Nigel Farage, the destruction of Vince Cable by Alistair Darling in the Chancellors Debate and Gordon Brown's crash and burn over Bigotgate in the third debate - certainly raised political interest and may well have led to the turnout being the highest since 1992.
The media had its influence as well, both in traditional and New Media forms, the Telegraph ran a series of rehashes of its expenses fraud campaign, culminating in the leak of additional MP's who were being investigated by the police and the outing of David Laws. The Grauniad attemped to back the Liberal Democrats but suffered from most of it's major columnist trying to issue cris du coeur for Labour. The Times solidily backed the Conservatives with just a hint of a wobble after the second debate. The Mail and Express concentrated their fire on hating everyone, before issuing a final call for a Conservative vote. The Redtops stuck to their guns, the Mirror for Labour, the Sun for the Tories and the Star for whoever hated Muslims the most this month. No one noticed what the Independent did.
Experiments by candidates in New Media varied from highly successful web sites, to very bland Facebook profiles (although some candidates claimed to have answered as many question from constituents by Facebook as by email) to some spectacular "pop-outs" usually on Twitter. Amazingly enough, the three major nominations for "Living Proof of Tuckers Law", Dorries, Hancock and Brown were all re-elected.
The final polls were in hindsight a disaster for the polling companies - with only the previous derided Opinium getting any measure of credibility out of them. The academic arguments over the whys and the wherefores of the errors went on well into 2011, but mainly concentrated on the overly low estimates for "the others" - the average had shown Labour and the Liberal Democrats on 27% and the Tories on 35%, not one of these figures turned out to be within the margin of error.
The actual night itself will go down in many political activists minds as one of complete horror. The high turnout caused immense problems at polling stations - only resolved by a late court order; many of the counts themselves were a farce, and the competitive coverage by the TV stations led to a number of mistakes partly by believing rumours from Twitter. Strangely enough, the "elephant in the room" of postal votes produced little more than a frisson of horror at the numbers rejected in some seats, although the small rash of arrests for personation on the day in three Birmingham seats caused both a problem for the BBC and two of the election petitions.
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