12 Things You Need To Know About The General Election

Surprise as Tories win enough seats to hold a government all by themselves...

12 Things You Need To Know About The General Election

by Sophie Wilkinson |
Published on

The Conservatives are set to win 2015's general election with a majority of the seats. Which is pretty weird for many people - not least because the Tories and Labour were neck and neck in just about every poll going for the past month or so.

Here's your need to know, your bragging rights for the pub later, if you're not bored of politics by then:

  1. Almost as many people voted Labour (30.6%) as Conservative (36.8%) but these votes didn't always convert into seats. This means that it effectively takes a lot more votes for Labour for a Labour MP to get in. Check out these stats, with 638 seats in:

  1. Ed Miliband has resigned as leader of the Labour party- thanking the Milifandom in the process. He's tweeted:

  1. Scotland has more pandas in it than Labour, Lib Dem or Conservative MPs. The SNP won against normally Labour strongholds with a whopping 56 seats for Parliament. Even Nicola Sturgeon, the party leader, couldn't believe it when the exit polls suggested they'd do so well:

That was last night, this is now:

  1. London - apart from the south-west of it - is mostly Labour, with the Lib Dems losing all of their previous seats bar one. Which could bode well for Tessa Jowell in the upcoming mayoral elections (which, incidentally, resident foreign nationals are allowed to vote in).

  2. Nick Clegg, whose party the Lib Dems have lost 46 seats (so far), has resigned as party leader. He did hold onto his seat in Sheffield Hallam, despite tough opposition from Labour's Oliver Coppard, who'd rallied together a lot of students annoyed at Clegg's manificent u-turn on fees. It seems as if the party was being punished for going into Coalition with the Tories - yet the Tories have remained. He told a press conference that this election has been 'immeasurably more crushing than I could ever have feared'

  3. 'Shy Tories' are said to have won this election. This is the term used for people who, when polled (this involves companies like Ipso and YouGov calling the average sample of voters up and asking who they plan to vote for) lied, or refused to say who they were voting for. That, or they only really decided at the last minute and decided to vote blue.

  4. Or was it Prince (sorry, Duke) William and Prince George? They did both wear blue at one of the biggest PR opportunities of the year:

  1. A woman tried to throw dog poo on Nigel Farage as he arrived at the South Thanet count

  1. David Dimbleby made a big slip up while presenting the election for the BBC, blurting out 'for God's sake'. But we don't know what he was forgodsaking.

  1. 30% of the new MPs are women! Which is the closest to 50% we've ever had!

  2. The Greens still have one MP - Caroline Lucas! We'll attribute that to the support of Brighton, Pavilion's voters, not just Russell Brand's last minute support.

  3. Youth turnout was 58%, which is the best it's been since 1964. Which is pretty good going.

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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.

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