SSP results

cork | politics / elections | opinion/analysis Friday May 06, 2005 18:11 by jmj

The SSP's share of the vote in the British general election has fallen pretty much across the board. On average, SSP candidates got 2% of the vote, losing 1.2% of the overall vote.

Just looking at the BBC website coverage of the election, and it seems to me that the SSP have had a really bad result. Of the 58 constituencies they contested, they only increased their percentage of the vote in one (Orkney & Shetland Islands) and held their share of the vote in one (Berwickshire). In all of the remaining 56, their share of the vote was reduced.

On average, SSP candidates saw their share of the vote fall by 1.2% of the overall vote. When you consider that the SSP's average vote share across constituencies inthis election is marginally over 2%, the scale of the fall is clear. (By the way, my calculations have been done in my head, so if I' m a bit out, apologies).

In the SSP's main base, Glasgow, they averaged 4% per constituency, a drop of 3% of the overall vote - almost halving their vote share, consistent with the results in the rest of Scotland.

To be honest, I have not being keeping a close eye on the SSP, but I find these figures astonishing. At a time when the Blair government has been exposed in so many ways, with disaffection from them at an all-time high and with the Tories still reviled in Scotland, I would have expected the SSP to make significant gains. It seems to me from looking at the results that they were overtaken in severla areas by the Greens, but while there would certainly be an overlap between the support bases of these 2 groups, surely the SSP would have been expected to secure a lot of the anti-war, anti-capitalist vote?