Nigel Marriott's Blog

An independent statistician using data to understand our world and to predict the future

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

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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%.

[Read more…] about UK General Elections #1 – How accurate are the opinion polls?

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

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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 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

UK General Election 2015 #1 – My Forecast

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In two days time, the results of the 2015 General Election will be in. Will there be another coalition? Will Labour get in? What about the SNP in Scotland? You can now see my forecast of the 2015 General Election presented as a YouTube clip and discover many interesting facts about elections in Britain.

The bottom line is that the polls will be wrong and the pundits will be caught by surprise!