UK parliamentary elections [Palfrey's life]

I stayed up until 5:30am watching this (4:30am uk time). Labour have won. Predicted majority was 68-70, way down from previous 160. Conservatives probably hovering around the critical 209 seats point (the number Labour got in the 1983 election). Lib Dems definately have 48, currently on +9/10 that they didn't have last time, predicted final result is therefore in the 60/61 range, which would be their best result since 1923.
Interesting things of note (or at least to me):

Bristol West has gone to the Lib Dems! Woo! Probably on the student vote!

Ealing North stayed Labour. Ho hum.

Seemingly more Monster Raving Looney party people than ever before, but they're not the same without Screaming Lord Sutch

Watching the bronzed Kilroy-Silk shaking hands with a Monster Raving representative over the head of a small, suited Conservative representative was an odd image

There's a "Church of the Militant Elvis" party

We appear to have entered a new wave of 3-party politics. This does raise certain issues - notably low share of actual votes for Labour/Conservatives (total predicted at 69%), and the whole "do we scrap first-past-the-post" vs. ending up with the crazy thing that is most coalition goverments. Future is interesting. Sleep now...

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Damn you Europeans with your multiparty systems and student participation in elections! ::envies::

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Multiparty? More like a vast multiplicity of parties. Especially when we get to seats like the party leaders, and you've got a half-dozen or so "anyone but blair" candidates who get about 100 votes a piece. Incidentally, on that topic, something that you'd *never* see at an american election happened at the announcement ceremony for Tony Blair's seat. There was another candidate there on a "my son was killed in Iraq, and it's all Blair's fault" platform, who got about 4000 votes, and as he was one of the top 3 most-voted for candidates at that seat, he got to give a speech. Was quite interesting watching this guy talking about how "if this hadn't been an illegal war, if my son hadn't been killed, i wouldn't be here. and it's tony's fault" while Tony Blair is standing about half a metre behind him trying not to squirm.

Major reason behind the student vote mattering: we have smaller constituencies. Average number of electors is probably around 80,000 or so. So, if you've just pissed off a significant block of a 15K+ student population, you're unlikely to get re-elected. Notably, apparently Cambridge (another constituency with heavy uni student population) also went from Labour->Lib Dems.

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Palfrey's life

UK parliamentary elections

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February