Election forecasting

UK 2017 General Election Forecast #3 – A Description of my Final Model

May 30, 2017 By Nigel

For the last 6 weeks, I have been making forecasts of the number of seats that each party will get in the 2017 General Election. If you have been following my forecasts, you will know that I have developed a variety of prediction models which all predict something different. With 10 days to go, I decided it was high time to settle on a single Final Model which is described in this post.

UK General Election 2017 Forecast #2 – Latest Prediction as of 21st May 2017

May 23, 2017 By Nigel

Here you can find my latest forecast of the 2017 UK General Election on 8th June. My forecast uses data from my latest UK Opinion Poll Tracker and it is worth reading that post in conjunction with this post.

My latest prediction using uniform regional swing adjusted for parties standing down is that the Conservatives will make a net gain of 52 seats resulting in a working majority of 119 seats. If anti-Conservative tactical voting takes place then this has the potential to reduce the Conservatives working majority to 73 seats which I am sure Theresa May would still be very happy with! [Read more…] about UK General Election 2017 Forecast #2 – Latest Prediction as of 21st May 2017

UK General Election 2017 Seat Forecast #1 – Bath, South West

May 21, 2017 By Nigel

This post was first published on 29th April 2017 and predicted a narrow Conservative Hold. I updated this post on 21st May 2017 to take into account latest data.

Welcome to the first of my constituency forecasts for the 2017 General Election. I’ve chosen to start with the seat of Bath currently held by the Conservatives for two reasons. First, it is where I live so I have a personal interest! Second, it is the bell-weather seat for the Liberal Democrats when it comes to the success of the anti-Brexit strategy. Fail to take Bath and they can kiss goodbye to any chance of making the election a success.

MY FORECAST – Lib Dem GAIN but still very marginal

UK General Election 2017 Seat Forecast #6 – Edinburgh South, Scotland

May 15, 2017 By Nigel

For my first Scottish seat forecast, I head up to Labour’s last seat in Scotland. I have just become aware of a constituency poll in Edinburgh that took place at the beginning of April before the election was called but the data has only just been released by Survation.

At first sight the poll is bad news for the Conservatives and good news for Labour but I will show that in fact the reverse is the case and that the poll is further evidence that a Brexit Realignment may be taking place. If so, the Conservatives majority in Parliament will be larger than current predictions are showing.

My Prediction – LAB Hold

UK General Election 2017 Seat Forecast #5 – North Norfolk, East England

May 13, 2017 By Nigel

This is my first seat forecast from the Eastern region and I have chosen the seat of North Norfolk for two reasons. First it is one of only 8 seats held by the Lib Dems in 2015 and one of 3 Lib Dem-Leave seats. Second, it is one of 23 seats in Britain this election that will be fought between only 3 candidates from the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats. Both UKIP and the Greens have decided not to stand in this seat and this will be a good seat to examine my model for handling the votes of parties that stand down.

My Prediction – CON GAIN but extremely marginal

UK General Election 2017 Seat Forecast #4 – Bishop Auckland, North East

May 10, 2017 By Nigel

This forecast was updated on 17th May 2017. The predicted outcome is unchanged from my previous forecast.

For my 4th seat forecast of the 2017 general election, I am heading to the North East which is where I grew up. A colleague who lives in the Bishop Auckland seat told me that “Labour could put a monkey up as a candidate and it would get elected”. Since the seat was created in 1885, no Tory has ever won this seat and it has been Labour since 1935.

My Prediction – CON Gain

UK General Election 2017 Seat Forecast #3 – Cardiff South & Penarth, Wales

May 8, 2017 By Nigel

This is the third of my seat forecasts for the 2017 general election and my first for a Welsh seat. By co-incidence the second Welsh Barometer poll was published today so I am able to explore this seat using a Welsh specific poll.

My Prediction – LAB Hold but now a very close marginal for what used to be a safe Labour seat

UK General Election 2017 Seat Forecast #2 – Kensington, London

May 2, 2017 By Nigel

This is the second of my seat forecasts for the 2017 general election. I have to be honest, it never occurred to me that I would be covering Kensington as that seems a straightforward seat to forecast. However, Kensington now has the distinction of being the first seat to have a constituency poll published and the results provide an insight as to which might be the best forecasting model to use.

My Prediction – Straightforward CON Hold but first signs that this is a Brexit realignment election

UK General Elections #1 – How accurate are the opinion polls?

May 1, 2017 By Nigel

The French pollsters are congratulating themselves for getting the first round of the French Presidential Election right last weekend. Recently Nate Silver criticised the accuracy of polling in the UK. For British pollsters, 2015 was a year they would like to forget and I am sure many of them will be nervous of the forthcoming general election but how nervous should they be?

I was one of the few people to predict the polls would be wrong in 2015 though the magnitude of the error was larger than I expected. Two years ago I based my conclusions on an analysis of polls between 1992 & 2015 but for the 2017 election I have analysed a longer time period from 1950 to 2015. I have made use of the excellent work done by Mark Pack who has systematically recorded every opinion poll published since 1945. Based on this, I am expecting the polls to be in error again with the Conservative lead over Labour underestimated by 2.6%.

UK General Election 2017 Forecast #1 – Prediction as of 28th April 2017

April 30, 2017 By Nigel

My latest prediction using uniform regional swing is that the Conservatives will make a net gain of 78 seats resulting in a working majority of 171 seats. Such a majority would be on a par with Tony Blair’s landslides of 1997 & 2001. If anti-Conservative tactical voting takes place then this has the potential to reduce the Conservatives working majority to 135 seats which I am sure Theresa May would be very happy with! [Read more…] about UK General Election 2017 Forecast #1 – Prediction as of 28th April 2017