General Election prediction thread

[muriel_volestrangler]

With probably 3 months to go before the election, I reckon it's time to start making predictions that we can embarrass ourselves with on the day after the election. There will be 650 seats; my prediction is:

Con 340
Lab 230
LD 50
Oth 30

meaning a Tory majority of 30. :( I'm basing this on indications that, although recent polls seem to be fairly steady with the Tories having about a 10% lead on Labour, and predictions on a simple swing say that would leave the Cons with a tiny majority or even short, there are also indications in polls that the Tory concentration on marginal seats has worked, and the swing to them is higher there.

The Electoral Calculus site, to give you the chance to play around with figures:

http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/index.html

[ikri]

1. It could get hairy for the Tories

By the looks of it, a 2% drop in support for the Tories (down to 37-38%) leaves them with a minority government, even if Labour & the Lib Dems don't pick up any additional votes.

Playing around with the predictor on there really does show how fucked up the first past the post system is though, a 40% Tory 33% Labour 16% Lib Dem split leaves the Tories 11 seats short, change that to 40% Tory, 16 Labour & 33% Lib Dem and the Tories get a 102 seat majority.

I'll go for

Con 320
Lab 240
LD 59
Oth 31

Hung parliament, Tories 6 short of a majority government.

[D-Notice]

2. Pirate Party UK

will get someone elected...

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Welcome back!

I haven't seen a post by you for a few months. So I've checked your blog - and you may stand in Twickenham? :( Against Vince Cable, then? Can't you stand against some New Labour bum-licker instead?

[D-Notice]

4. Hello again!

I've just been lurking for the past few months.

At the moment PPUK is looking for candidates & considering where to stand.

Nothing is confirmed and entirely possible that I'll just be helping out whomever we decide to nominate.

Last I heard we're still going for Twickenham but accept that there is little chance of us winning the seat. However, maybe we'll get in somewhere else.

[T_i_B]

5. Dunno about the national result

I'm more interested in who get's in where I am. My personal circumstances have changed somewhat in recent times and I'm now in a seat with a 10,000 Labour majority and a waffler of a Labour MP.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Boundary changes have moved me to a different constituency

I'm now in Winchester - which looks like a safe Lib Dem seat if you just look at the numbers (Tories 2nd, no-one else anywhere).

But the current MP is Mark Oaten. He's standing down after his rentboy revelations; no-one can work out if the electorate will hold that against the new Lib Dem candidate, or if his majority was because of personal support that may melt away (Winchester had been fairly solidly Tory up to 1997, when Oaten won it by just 2 votes; so close that the Tories demanded a new election, got one, and Oaten won comfortably, and still got over 50% of the vote each election after that), or if Lib Dem support in the area is longer lasting (the town I live in is about 45/45/10 Con/LD/Lab; some rural areas that have been taken out of the Winchester constituency are thought to be fairly solidly Tory).

[T_i_B]

7. Oh it's not boundary changes that have done for me.

One seat that may be interesting due to boundary changes is Sheffield Central. Traditionally rock solid Labour, it's having some of the rougher areas such as Burngreave taken out and some of the more studenty Lib Dem wards in Sheffield such as Broomhill put in.

In addition to that the Lib Dems are putting up a high profile candidate in the shape of Sheffield Council leader Paul Scriven. Could make for an interesting contest in a seat that's usually a stroll in the park for Labour.

P.S Hasn't Mark Oaten been on that Tower Block of Commons programme? I'm sure that will affect how people think of him for good or ill. Mind you, it's Austin Mitchell who I'm more worried about!

[fedsron2us]

8. Not sure the Tories poll advantage is going to translate

into seats that easily. The electoral boundaries favour Labour so that the Tories have to garner more votes than them to win a seat.

In addition there has been a tendency in recent council and parliamentary elections for the Conservatives to get bigger swings in seats they already hold (e.g they get bigger majorities but not necessarily more seats).

Lastly and most tellingly Labour has over a 60 seat majority which will not be easy to turn over in a single General Election. As I have mentioned here before Thatcher's supposed seminal 1979 General Election triumph in defeating Jim Callaghan in 1979 only saw her win a majority of 47, and that was against a Labour minority government that relied on Liberal Democrat votes. I have a feeling that this election is going to deliver results very much like those of the early 1970s where governments struggled to obtain workable majorities. Actually I think that may be no bad thing since it will shift power away from the Executive back towards Parliament and give our elected representatives something more important to do than fiddle their expenses.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. The last time the Tories won in 1992, the top 3 party votes were

Party		Con	Lab	Lib Dem
Seats won	336	271	20
Percentage	41.9%	34.4%	17.8%

That was a 21 seat majority.

That's not far off what the polls are saying now. Lib Dems are a bit higher, Tories a bit lower, and Labour lower still. Yes, Thatcher got a majority of something like 47 in 1979 (Wikipedia says 43); that was from a lead of 7 points in votes over Labour, less than the Tories are averaging now. The increased Lib/Lib Dem support, especially in their target seats, has changed some things since 1979, but not that much, I think. The elections of 1970 and 1974 saw the Tories and Labour within 3.5% of each other. The likely vote at the moment is significantly different from that.

I'd be happier with a hung parliament than a Tory majority (I think everyone here would), but it looks more like a Tory win to me. What frightened me was this:

This pattern of swing, with voters in groups that traditionally support Labour swinging the most strongly toward the Conservatives, produces a truly startling pattern when we get to MORI’s breaks by type of seat. MORI have the Conservative lead in Lab-v-Con seats with a Labour majority of under 8.7% of 21 points. Depending on exactly what notional figures MORI used and how they treated three way marginals, that represents a swing of around about 12.5%. Looking at Lab-v-Con seats with majorities up to 13.9% the Conservative lead is still 21 points – suggesting an even bigger swing in those seats (somewhere around 14%).

If the Conservative swing is biggest in Lab-v-Con marginals it must be lower elsewhere. It isn’t in safe Labour seats, MORI suggest a swing of 13% there. Part of it is Lib Dem seats, where the swing from Labour to the Conservatives is less than 1% (the swing from LD to Con is 7.4%, but I suspect that under-represents how well the Lib Dems would actually do). Where the big swings in Labour seats are really balanced out seems to be in the Tory heartlands – in seats the Conservatives already hold MORI’s figures only suggest a swing from Labour of 5%.

Of course the Conservative lead has shrunk considerably since last year, but if a pattern of swing like this happened in reality it could hardly be more perfect for the Tories – tons of extra votes in the seats they need to win, but very few extra votes in the seats they already hold where they don’t need them. To be honest though, while I’ve no reason not to trust the figures, it just doesn’t seem believable. Previous elections have never shown differential swings of this degree, we simply don’t get swings of 5% in one type of seat and 14% in another. Perhaps this is something different, perhaps this could be a real realignment election, but while other polls of marginal seats have shown bigger swings in marginals, none have shown swings this much bigger. Still, it’s intriguing…

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2444

[Anarcho-Socialist]

10. My pointless prediction

Con 312
Lab 259
LD 48

This would leave the Tories 14 short of a majority.

In such a situation it could:
*Gain confidence votes from the SNP and DUP in return for concessions to the Scottish Parliament and the political position of Unionism in N.I.
*Try and take some right-wing Labour and Lib Dem MPs across the aisle to form a bare majority
*Invite the Lib Dems into government. Lib Dems get cabinet posts, or perhaps provide confidence votes in return for PR reform (a bit unlikely)
*Form a grand coalition with Labour. Depending on how long Brown lasts, an even more right-wing takeover of Labour could make the Party pliable for a grand coalition with the Tories. (probably even more unlikely).

In any case, a minority Tory government would last 12-18 months before Cameron calls an election to get a majority, or the opposition will do it for him if they think they can get back in power.

[craigmatic]

11. hung parliament with a lib-lab alliance

[TheBigotBasher]

12. Lib Dems have ruled out a Lib-Lab pact.

The Lib Dems have their eyes on lots of Labour seats in the South East and they did very well removing Labour from the South West in 2005.

To be honest though, while I’ve no reason not to trust the figures, it just doesn’t seem believable. Previous elections have never shown differential swings of this degree, we simply don’t get swings of 5% in one type of seat and 14% in another.

That bit is entirely wrong, the 1997 General Election showed that. In North West London, seats had swings to Labour of almost 20% because of the Edgware hospital fiasco.

2005 saw all kinds of strange results in part because Blair while hated was not exactly Count Dracula. Blair v Portaloo or even Hague in 2005 would have produced a very different result to Blair v Dracula.
I would expect similar such swings against incumbents because of the expenses scandal. True blue and deep red seats that may switch despite the national trend.

Complicating the London results are the elections in all 32 boroughs, which means in 2010 the Lib Dems are the Party to watch in terms of whether Cameron can pull off a majority and may just make the beating Brown is likely to get appear much much worse.

I can see some surprises. I think they will pick up the merged Brent South and East seat, Brent Central, despite ward make up showing otherwise. Their organisation is simply better and they went on from the 2005 General Election to further decimate the Tories and Labour to go from being a rump party to a near majority party on the Council. I would not be surprised if both Brent North and Brent central fall to the Liberal Democrats. Both Labour and Conservative HQs are to blame for the organisational mess in Brent. Neither are prepared to intervene in internal battles that have spread to many a neigbouring Constituency.

No one back in 1992 would have expected the Liberal Democrats to have picked up Hornsey and Wood Green and now Lynne Featherstone looks to be firmly in situ.

Islington is another battle that could be helped by the Council Elections. Emily Thornberry looks to be on very weak ground in an area that historically no one would have expected the Liberal Democrats to have got anyway near.

The possible outcomes in Barking just terrify me.

Some of the Liverpool and Birmingham seats hold promise for the Lib Dems not reflected in the wider polls and although there are no other elections in Scotland, it is likely to be a huge mess for them there.

None of this is enough to turn the Liberal Democrats in to the second Party, but even if they maintain 19% and continue to pick up seats based on local issues they will again on already good results in 2005. If they maintain the 25% they have been polling on the ground in actual elections Labour is in for a tougher time than the talking heads are projecting.

[T_i_B]

13. That's why it always pays to keep a good eye on the local results.

In East Anglia I would expect Labour to do very badly but round where I am right now there's a lot of safe Labour seats.

[Mr Creosote]

14. Opening myself up to ridicule

I get
Lab 308
Cons 271
Lib Dems 39

I really believe people will are beginning to see through Cameron. I also distrust the polls which used to understate the Tory vote and now I believe understate Labour's vote.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

15. The Lib Dems would be foolish to show their cards now anyway

I find it hard to believe that the Lib Dems would rule out a coalition in all circumstances. It wouldn't be particularly to their advantage to say now if they would consider joining a Labour-led coalition. They have some Lab/Lib Dem marginals and of course if they're seen as willing to join a Labour coalition now it could prevent them picking up disaffected Labour votes. The Lib Dems would prefer to maximise their return of seats even to the expense of Labour, as it would positively affect any negotiating position.