North West analysis

I'M clambering over piles of copies of Freedom to provide this morning's blog but by the end of the week the newspapers will all be distributed to homes across the region.

Not much in the NewsRound today, with predicted smears in a couple of newspapers failing to materialise.

A rant from Harry Phibbs in the Daily Mail

More from Denis McShane in the Daily Telegraph

Four Jags campaigning against the BNP in the Daily Telegraph

The Greens can beat the BNP in The Guardian

As I said in a posting last week, I'm not concerned at all by the media's promotion of the Green candidate in the North West. Rather than hurting Nick Griffin's aspirations to become an MEP it will help them. Green votes will only come from Labour and the Lib-Dems and it's their votes that need to come down from what they were in 2004, as well as the BNP's vote going up, to ensure that the North West region elects a BNP representative to the European Parliament.

Consider this example:
The result in 2004 in the North West region was as follows::
Labour 27.4% - 3 seats
Conservative 24.2% - 3 seats
Liberal Democrat 15.9% - 2 seats
UK Independence Party 11.7% - 1 seat
British National Party 6.4% - 0
Green 5.6% - 0
Others 8.8% - 0

Well like it or not there is going to be some quite serious vote share changes with UKIP's and Labour's vote certain to drop. I envisage . . .
5% of UKIP's vote will go to the Tories and 2% to us.
2% of Labour's vote will go to us, 2% to the Lib-Dems and 2% to the Greens.
2% of Lib-Dem votes could go to Greens if the media campaign promoting the Greens gets a foothold.
The other's vote will disappear too, probably evenly divided between the Tories, Labour and the Lib-Dems.

So this is my prediction of the vote share in the North West on June 4th.
Conservative 31%
Labour 23%
Liberal Democrat 17%
British National Party 10%
Green 9%
UKIP 5%
Others 5%

The seats will be divided up like this with one less seat to fight for than five years ago.
Ist seat - Conservative 31%
2nd seat - Labour 23%
3rd seat - Liberal Democrat 17%
4th seat - Conservative 15.5%
5th seat - Labour 11.5%
6th seat - Conservative 10.3%
7th seat - BNP 10%
8th seat - Green 9%

So we are in comfortably and could even survive with the Lib-Dem vote share a little higher and them taking the final seat rather than the Greens.

All interesting calculations anyway.

Today first thing I'm off to Workington to drop the troops to start delivering copies of Freedom to the postal voters, then, I understand, I have to meet up with a team from BBC Newsnight who apparently want some footage of us campaigning. Waiting for confirmation of this, is a distraction I could do without. I dislike the media intensely and see no reason why we should put ourselves out just to accommodate them. We would be much better off just getting on with the job in Workington but orders are orders so I have to do as I'm told.