Bye-bye Charles! Bye-bye Jackie! Hello Caroline!

Unfortunately Hazel Blears kept her seat, but nice to see both Charles “safety elephant” Clarke and Jackie Smith finally were told to bugger off by their constituencies. Also good to see the Greens win their first seat.

The overall impression seems to be that, despite all the triumphalism, the television debates did not have the impact on the election itself they were predicted to have based on the polls. It became an almost normal two horse race again, with the Lib Dems doing nowhere near as well as “Clegg Mania” was supposed to make them. Currently they’re at 47 seats according to Wikipedia, with 565 of 650 seats declared. Last time they won 62, if the end result is the same, slightly better or even worse then it’s clear that Clegg has failed to deliver the breakthrough the debates seemed to hand him.

And the reason might just be that enough people took a second look at the likely outcome, saw the Tories looming and decided better to vote for the devil they knew. Labour might be bastards, but the Tories seem to be even worse bastards and a Lib Dem victory at the expense of Labour might just have delivered a Liberal-Tory government. Meanwhile the Tory voters the Lib-Dems were chasing refused to be caught it seems, rather having the real ones in power than a surrogate. A wasted opportunity, though the Lib-Dems might still end up holding the balance of power in what now looks like a well and truly hung parliament. They should’ve gone for the left of Labour vote, not chase lefty Tories.

Good to see Caroline Lucas become the first Green MP. Results from Poplar and Limehouse, where George Galloway is standing, aren’t in yet, but it looks like Labour has won that, according to the BBC.

What’s really worrying are the reports of polls closing while there were still voters waiting to vote; that’s a sign of bad organisation.