Home

Previous | Next

Harman wins by playing the system better

  • Jun. 24th, 2007 at 4:36 PM
Politics
I said:
I hope for Johnson, but think Harman has a strong chance, and she made a blatent play for Cruddas's second prefs near the end,
And after the results are called, we see that:
Electoral college results
Candidate 1st round    2nd round   3rd round  4th round  5th round  
Hilary Benn 16.40% 18.22% 22.33%      
Hazel Blears 11.77%          
Jon Cruddas 19.39% 20.39% 23.89% 30.06%    
Peter Hain 15.32% 16.42%        
Harriet Harman 18.93% 21.23% 25.88% 33.58% 50.43% ELECTED
Alan Johnson 18.16% 23.74% 27.90% 36.35% 49.56%  


Her blatant grab for his support worked like a charm. Cruddas won the first round, but barely picked up any second preferences, Johnson was picking up more until close to the end, when Harman then jumped ahead with Jon's votes. Interesting times it seems. Lots of people on the Labour blogs bitching about the voting system, one even said it was "stalinist". To me it remains the best way of determining a result acceptable to all, allows for multiple candidates rather than requiring a stitch up before the actual vote and is invaluable in a close contest, as this undoubtedly was. It also shows that Harman knew to play for second and third preferences a lot more than others, apparently internal canvassing wasn't asking for preferences at wll--and the media constantly referring to it as a "complicated" system was really annoying me throughout.

But most important aspect: Blears last place on barely 11% of the vote. Labour members renew my faith in humanity a little with that one, word has it there was a massive cheer when her elimination was announced.

Loads of politics posts in a row. Time for some frivolity methinks...

Filed under:

Comments

( Comment )
[info]burkesworks wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 04:00 pm (UTC)
Let us not forget that Harperson was, in a previous incarnation as Secretary of State for Social Security, the first cabinet minister sacked by Tony Blair for being crap at her job. To be honest I'm not expecting much from her, given her past track record, closeness to Gordon, and endorsement from Polly (albeit largely through being a particularly monstrous member of the monstrous regiment); but Harpic does have the saving grace of Not Being Blears.

Who described the voting system as "stalinist" then? Harding? Akehurst?
| Reply | Thread
[info]matgb wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 04:09 pm (UTC)
Some twonk on Labour Home, I hit the B4L feeds heavily when I heard it'd been called, and didn't get very far for ages. Political Betting was fairly good, and Akehurst was the person who gave me the link to the results on the Labour site (their front page is very poor). He's also just put up the first round prefs, trying to sort out his cruddy formatting now. Hmm.
1st round, MPs, Members, Unions, Total
Benn, 4.26, 7.21, 4.93, 16.4
Blears, 4.99, 3, 3.77, 11.77
Cruddas, 4.63, 5.67, 9.09, 19.39
Hain 4.81, 3.87, 6.64, 15.32
Harman, 6.54, 8.04, 4.35, 18.93
Johnson, 8.08, 5.53, 4.55, 18.16

Let's see if that worked.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]matgb wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 04:14 pm (UTC)
Nope, try a different method 
1st round, MPs,  Members, Unions, Total
Benn,      4.26, 7.21,    4.93,   16.4
Blears,    4.99, 3,       3.77,   11.77
Cruddas,   4.63, 5.67,    9.09,   19.39
Hain       4.81, 3.87,    6.64,   15.32
Harman,    6.54, 8.04,    4.35,   18.93
Johnson,   8.08, 5.53,    4.55,   18.16
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]getawaywithit wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 04:31 pm (UTC)
Interesting that the preferences split almost exactly evenly between Harman and Johnson - she had a .77% lead in the first round, and then a .87% lead at the end.

I do find myself wondering who the 1% of voters are who put 1) Blears 2) Cruddas though...
| Reply | Thread
[info]matgb wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 04:34 pm (UTC)
I suspect some of the latter is in fact people only using one vote, I know at least one commenter that I read only voted for Blears, which would put Jon's percentage up alongside everyone else.

But yeah, that is a strange switch; but then some people in NI voted DUP first SF second or vice versa so stranger things have happened.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]getawaywithit wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 04:39 pm (UTC)
That's probably a decent explanation for most of it - I was forgetting that it was percentages and not absolute totals. While there probably are some who voted that way, IMO Blears was the candidate I could most imagine people voting solely for on the grounds that the other five might be capable of developing opinions independently.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]blue_condition wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 05:01 pm (UTC)
Someone who voted for Blears and is bright enough to write? Blimey.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]matgb wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 05:54 pm (UTC)
You've not encountered Mr Akehurst then?
http://lukeakehurst.blogspot.com/

Although the parody is a bit more fun at times:
http://lukeakehurstsblog.blogspot.com/
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]burkesworks wrote:
Jun. 25th, 2007 12:58 pm (UTC)
http://lukeakehurstsblog.blogspot.com/

'Kin roared!
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]mooism wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 04:38 pm (UTC)
11% seems quite a lot for a 6th-of-6 candidate though — more than half what the leading candidates had at that stage.

Harman was in the top two in each round, so I don’t see how anyone can claim her winning is anything to do with a perverse voting system.
| Reply | Thread
[info]matgb wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 04:55 pm (UTC)
I don’t see how anyone can claim her winning is anything to do with a perverse voting system.

Given the much larger membership of Labour, and that I've met some blithering idiot LibDems, I can, there are a lot of people out there that think FPTP is the way to go and refuse to understand anything else; combine that with the BBC meme of the "complicated" voting system making it hard to predict and the pollsters getting it very far wrong, I can see why they don't like it. They're wrong, but I get it.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]rhythmaning wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 04:51 pm (UTC)
I think the Stalinist quote might reflect that MPs have such a heavy weighting - each of the three consituencies return one third of the result (if I have followed it clearly), so that the MPs can skew the result compared to individual members. Did someone mention OMOV?!
| Reply | Thread
[info]matgb wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 08:59 pm (UTC)
Good point, hadn't thought about it in that way. But some of the commentary was definitely anti-AV, and much of that in a very ill-informed way. Ah well.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]blue_condition wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 05:00 pm (UTC)
The important thing is that Hazel Blears is utterly destroyed. One small victory in the War Against Intelligence. Good f***ing riddance to her.
| Reply | Thread
[info]raggedhalo wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 05:42 pm (UTC)
I'm happy with that, to be honest.
| Reply | Thread
[info]matgb wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 09:16 pm (UTC)
In the 'Johnson didn't win' sort of context?
| Reply | Parent | Thread
(Anonymous) wrote:
Jun. 25th, 2007 08:22 am (UTC)
That helps...but also how far Cruddas got, and the sound beating administered to Blears.

Oooh, on the subject of Alan...
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]raggedhalo wrote:
Jun. 25th, 2007 08:24 am (UTC)
That last was me, btw.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]purplecthulhu wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 06:10 pm (UTC)
I've always suspected Harman of Trot-control-freak tendencies, but also recall how crap she was before Blair sacked her. For more background see [info]rozk here.
| Reply | Thread
[info]matgb wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 08:57 pm (UTC)
Hmm, that is an interesting story, and ties in with what I've heard from other sources as well. Still, she's in a daft job and won't get a cabinet role; as a 'rally the troops' candidate she might do OK.

Thanks for the link; another journal to explore it seems.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]tyrell wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 06:43 pm (UTC)
Very pleased that Blears got kicked in the face. Would have preferred one or two of the others to Harman, though.
| Reply | Thread
[info]missedith01 wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 07:10 pm (UTC)
Yup, it's not a good result (which of us expected that?) but it is at least an amusing one. :-)

Harman may be OK in this job ... it's not like having a department to run. And just because she annoys me doesn't mean she annoys everyone.
| Reply | Thread
[info]matgb wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 09:18 pm (UTC)
Alternately, as linked in the comment above:
http://rozk.livejournal.com/158986.html

That ties in with some stuff I'd heard about her and Hewitt, so, well, we'll see.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]miss_s_b wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 07:44 pm (UTC)
* dances about singing *

Blears came last! Blears came last!

And, more importantly, this was exactly what you predicted, was it not, my love? I think the smugmode icon is called for on your behalf ;)
| Reply | Thread
[info]matgb wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 08:48 pm (UTC)
Well, the order they were knocked out was exactly matching my preferences all the way through until the final result, I had a slight preference for Johnson but it was very close, an dI had Cruddas down third. Wonder how much the QT debate did affect it? A lot of voters will probably have only seen that.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]miss_s_b wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 08:51 pm (UTC)
I suspect quite a bit. Harman DID perform very well.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]mooism wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 09:18 pm (UTC)
Eurgh, same icon used by different people in adjacent comments => brain explody.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]matgb wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 09:23 pm (UTC)
I stole it from her in the fist place, and she told me to use it. So I did. It gets worse elsewhere, the "Angels have the phone box" icon is very popular at the moment.

And I've seen entire threads with the same icon used by four or five different people. Which does make it very hard to follow at times; weird how icons become a visual key to a person so quickly.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]mooism wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 09:40 pm (UTC)
I always used to be surprised at how easy it was to identify who was saying what when all I had to go on was a username. Then I was amazed at how easily an icon would mentally override the username.

I suppose it makes sense; text is a more recent invention than vision.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]miss_s_b wrote:
Jun. 24th, 2007 09:23 pm (UTC)
At least we're not saying the exact same thing at the same time today.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
( Comment )

Introspection

I'm Mat Bowles, a Devonshire lad displaced to Yorkshire. I'm a part-time analyst, marketer and website manage, although mostly I'm a house-husband.

Wikio - Top BlogsThis is my personal general interest journal where I write about or link to whatever I've fond that amused, intrigued or enraged me at the time. I'm a committed liberal, equalist and atheist, but I really like it when people can demonstrate I'm wrong, and have close friends with whom I completely disagree on some if not all of those points.

Coalition For Choice

There probably ought to be a Creative Commons licence in here somewhere but in the meantime consider this permission to quote me (link) & link to what I write.

If you decide to keep reading, please do say hello, let me know where you found me from, etc. I promise not to bite (well, unless you want me to...)

Page Summary

Latest Month

June 2009
S M T W T F S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
282930    

View Archives

Powered by LiveJournal.com
Designed by [info]matgb

Profile

Anarchist
[info]matgb
Mat Bowles
Mat Bowles

Interesting

Elsewhere

Blogroll

Friends

Profiles

Livejournal stuff (ignore)

Frequent Tags (5+ uses)

Tags page