Lord Ashcroft poll

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

May 21, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

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

By-Elections #1 – How to predict outcomes in the Brexit era

February 19, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

Since the UK voted to leave the EU on 23^rd June 2016, there have been 3 contested parliamentary by-elections (Witney, Richmond Park, Sleaford & North Hykeham) and one uncontested by-election (Batley & Spen which was the late Jo Cox’s seat). Many commentators have analysed these results to see how the referendum result has impacted on parliamentary voting intentions. Whatever voter dynamics are revealed, it is reasonable to assume that they are likely to influence future by-elections. In late October 2016 just after the Witney result, I realised it could be possible to build a by-election model by combining two sources of data.

My own estimates of the Leave & Remain votes in each of the 650 parliamentary constituencies where I calculated that 400 out of 650 seats voted Leave.
My interpretation of the Lord Ashcroft “exit poll” carried out on 21^st to 23^rd June 2016 and published immediately after the results were announced.

At the time, I described my by-election modelling approach in a youtube clip and that is worth listening to. I have made some changes to my model since then so this post is the most up to date version of my model. I will illustrate the basic principle using the Witney by-election (David Cameron’s former seat) of 20^th October 2016 where the top line numbers are: