The Conservatives won because of the first-past-the-post voting system. In a transferable vote presidency, Johnson's 43% of the poll would have lost.
In fact if national voting figures are used, the combined anti-Brexit parties (53%) got more votes, with the Tories and the Brexit party together getting a decisive lower vote (47%). If this was a 'second referendum', it was not in favour of Brexit and won by a larger margin for Remain.
There was no great Tory swing: they increased their party's vote share by just 1.2% over Theresa May's election two years ago. (While they lost votes in some areas, they gained more in other areas.) Labour lost votes in all regions, mostly with people tactically voting Conservative. In contrast, the Liberal Democrats increased their share of the vote nationally but failed to translate this into seats.
It might have been possible for the Conservatives to be defeated if Labour and Lib Dems had done constituency deals, so not splitting the anti-Tory vote across the country. But even with this, while both Johnson and Corbyn were widely disliked and mistrusted throughout the country, it came down to who was disliked the least, which was Corbyn, who sat on the fence too many times and was seen to be ineffective in dealing with issues within his party.
The five things that helped Johnson. 1. Repeating again and again that he'd get Brexit done. 2. Focusing on a small number of promises (Labour was far more wide-ranging.) 3. Safety first in their pledges - nothing controversial (e.g. no mention of fox hunting). 4. Traditional Labour voters seem to have either stayed at home, or voted for the Brexit party. 5. Despite being unpopular, Johnson was the stronger campaigner.
Can the Tories deliver any of their manifesto promises - most based on wishful thinking and sleight of hand - who knows? No-one - least of all Johnson.
The Electoral Commission has now published how much was donated to political parties during the election campaign. (Parties are required by law to declare how much is donated.) The combined total was £30,721,998!!! (My verdict: that is serious money that would have been better donated to the NHS, social services and the prison, probation & police services.)
There were some sizeable donations of over £7,500 in the final two days of campaigning.
- Conservatives: £1.4m (including £500,000 from John Caudwell and £375,000 from Sir Ehud Shelag)
- Brexit Party: £50,000 (2 gifts of £25,000 from former Tory Christopher Harborne, who had already donated more than £3m since the summer)
- SNP: £14,929
However, over the entire period, the union Unite gave the largest non-individual donation of £3.2m.
Interesting fact: There are more female MPs in this Parliament than ever, at 220 out of 650 (34%). The Liberal Democrats actually have more female than male MPs (7 out of 11 at 67%), Labour are next with 104 out of 202, so just slightly over 50%), then SNP with around 30% female MPs and not surprisingly the Conservatives trail with just under 25% out of 365 MPs (so less than a quarter).
Sources: various including BBC Election results analysis and General election 2019: Surge in Tory donations before polling day.
