Results tagged “arbitraryconstant”

I am heading off for a two-week holiday break.

Apart from a few drafted posts that are scheduled to appear over the next few days, and any of the usual wonderful stuff that Phil and Stef post here over the next two weeks, there won't be much activity here on the blog or over on in that time.

If you're about to head off on a trip as well, I wish you a relaxing and enjoyable break.

Before the election, I gave my detailed prediction for the General Election 2010. Let's see how I did:

I think the Tories will be the biggest party and I think they'll have enough for a majority. I've already posted that I think their majority will be between 30-40. This means a vote share of over 41%. Though I probably don't agree with myself now (I think it will be a bit tighter - vote share of just over 40% and a majority circa 20), I'm going to stick with my original prediction.

I was right that the Tories would be the biggest party, but I was wrong that they would have a majority. I knew I would be wrong about the size of the majority if they had have had one, but the fact that they didn't secure a majority is something I'm reasonably happy to be wrong about. This doesn't make it any less astonishing. In the face of this government’s apparently discredited economic management, the fact that Britain is ‘broken’ and Gordon Brown is supposedly one of the most unpopular modern Prime Ministers - coupled with double-digit leads for much of the last 2 years - the fact that David Cameron didn't seal the deal with the electorate tells you all you need to know about what the public thought about him and his policies.

I think that Labour will be the second biggest party, on both the share of the vote and in terms of the number of seats. I think their vote share will be high 28%.

Labour was easily the second biggest party, and their vote share was 29.0%. I'll take that. The reports of the death of the Labour party have not just been exaggerated, but wrong.

I think the Liberal Democrats will be the third biggest party, on both the share of the vote and in terms of the number of seats. I think their vote share will be around 24%.

The Lib Dems were indeed the third biggest party and I was right to anticipate they would perform significantly below expectations. But even I was out on how badly they would perform. Despite polls putting them on a par with Labour, they only secured 23.0% of the vote share.

Turnout [will] be no more than 68%.

This was my biggest call, and I was right. Turnout was 65.1% - the third lowest turnout in modern General Elections (the two previous worst were 2001 at 59.4% and 2005 at 61.4%). Many predicted turnout would be over 70% - a level below which no elections between 1945 and 1997 dropped - and would surpass the turnout of 1997. Many said that the leaders' debates had engaged a whole new generation of voters.

All of those people were wrong.

Thus, I think I can fairly pleased with my predictions and am glad that I'm not one of those people who will have egg on their face.

After some significant technical problems over the last week, in which the behind-the-scenes of arbitrary constant became worryingly shaky, I'm pleased to say we're now back up and running.

Fortunately for us - and potentially unfortunately for you - this means we can cover the lead-in to the General Election next Thursday with our usual mix of insight, naivety and sheer optimism in the face of all known facts and received opinion.

Bet you're pleased we're back...

Your three humble resident bloggers got together on Tuesday night for a drink at a fashionable North London pub. For a laugh, we entered the quiz that night under the team name "Vince Cable and Nick Cleggs".

Ironically enough, we won.

Fresh from our success, we decided it would be a good idea to write down our predictions for the upcoming General Election. These, then, are they. The first is the specific range each of us thinks the result will fall into; the second is the more general position that range represents. Whoever is the closest will get a book, bought by the other two, up to the value of £20.

• Phil: Labour majority of 5 / Labour as majority party
• Stef: Conservatives short of overall majority by 10-15 seats / hung parliament
• Rich: Conservative majority of between 30-40 seats / Conservatives as majority party

(Note: please remember these are only personal thoughts - they represent neither the result we hope for nor the views of anyone we're associated with, professionally or personally.)

Leave your prediction in the comments below!

I don't want to navel gaze on the redesign of arbitrary constant too much: blogging on blogging is never much fun at the best of times. But I did just want to briefly outline the main reason for making the change.

I set this site up in 2003, mainly as a personal space to get a few thoughts down. Comments were originally available, but the spammers soon took over and I didn't have the technical ability to be able to install the relevant plugins.

Fast-forward 7 years and the site has become a space for blogging on politics and equality (amongst many other things). In terms of comments, it's only now that the situation has been rectified (thanks to the generous time and effort of Richard Benson. But now that is has been changed, I'm delighted. For me, the big change is the ability to have debates here on the site. I enjoy reading the blog posts of my fellow contributors (Stef W and Phil Copestake) and am looking forward to commenting on their posts; and I hope my readers (I believe we're now up to 8 of you) will feel free to add their thoughts.

This move is a natural extension of my tweeting (, and which you can also find in the elsewhere section), so please do get involved!

(Aside: I have no doubt the site will get trolled by people with funny political views. But they're welcome to post them; it's just highly unlikely they'll get a serious response.)