Author Archives: David McHardy

The next general election will be a Conservative-facing one: some stats

By David McHardy | Tue 21st January 2020 - 5:19 pm

Following the 2019 general election, we are now second in 91 seats, of which 80 are held by the Conservatives and just 9 by Labour (the other 2 are held by the SNP). Of the 10 seats where we are closest (less than 3000 votes behind), 8 are currently held by The Conservatives.

You can model some interesting seat projections based on various swing scenarios. As shown by Electoral Calculus:

A 5% swing from the Conservatives to us means we win an additional 15 seats , end result hung parliament (Lab +23, Con -40)
A 5% swing from Labour to us means that we win just an additional 4 seats, end result Conservative majority 114 (Lab -20, Con +17)

In other words, when we take votes off Labour then The Conservatives win, Labour lose and we barely move. When we take votes off The Conservatives then they lose, we win and Labour also win.

From Labour’s point of view, the story is similar:

A 5% swing from us to Labour has Labour up 16 seats, end result Conservative majority 52 (Lib Dem -5, Con -14)
A 5% swing from the Conservatives to Labour has Labour up 53 seats, end result hung parliament (Lib Dem +8, Con -63)