Tag Archives: electoral calculus

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)

The polls in 2014: what they show with 133 days left til 7 May 2015

By Stephen Tall | Wed 24th December 2014 - 1:00 pm

The final polls of the year have been published — getting on for 500 have been commissioned in 2014 — and their story is told in the graph below.

It shows Labour’s declining (down from c.38% to c.33%), the Tories static (at c.32%), Ukip on the rise (up from c.12% to c.16%), and the Lib Dems dipping (down from c.10% to c.8%). I’ve added trendlines to cut through the noise and give us a signal:

The last month has done little to alter this overall picture.

Posted in Polls | Also tagged anthony wells, george osborne, icm and uk polling report | 36 Comments

Latest ICM poll shows Lib Dems at 14%. I’d call that “mildly encouraging”

By Stephen Tall | Tue 14th January 2014 - 10:20 am

The latest ICM poll for The Guardian is published today. Its topline figures show Labour on 35% (-2%), the Tories on 32% (n/c), with the Lib Dems on 14% (+2%) and Ukip on 10% (+1%).

The changes from last month are all within the margin of error, so nothing too dramatic can be read into it. The ratings are mildly encouraging for the Lib Dems. The ICM poll at the equivalent point in the parliamentary cycle – January 2009 – had the party at 16%. ICM’s poll is the one most eagerly awaited by poll-watchers, as the company has the best historic track record. It also tends to give the Lib Dems better ratings (than, say, YouGov) because of its methodology – but it’s a methodology which has yet to be tested under Coalition conditions.

Input the figures into Electoral Calculus’s online prediction software and you’ll see they’d give Labour a majority of 24, with the Lib Dems reduced to 35 seats. In reality, I think the Lib Dems would do a little better than that on 14%, owing to the incumbency boost of our MPs’ (and local activists’) hard work – which would also likely eat into Labour’s seat tally, as it’s the Lib Dem-Labour battlegrounds where we’re most vulnerable.

Posted in Polls | Also tagged icm | 32 Comments