Majority

UK Local Elections #2C – 2025 West England Mayoral Election – Review of My Forecast

May 6, 2025 By Nigel

Labour have retained the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) Mayoralty As I predicted, the contest was won with less than a quarter of the vote and with a small majority (less than 3%). Unfortunately, I had the Greens winning the mayoralty so on the face of it, this is a forecasting error for me. However, when voters are as fragmented as they are today, measuring forecasting skill is not as straightforward as it might seem.

UK Local Elections #2B – 2025 West England Mayoral Election – My Final Forecast

April 27, 2025 By Nigel

The West England Combined Authority (WECA) Metro Mayor election of 2025 will probably be won with less than a quarter of all votes cast. My analysis shows it is a 5-way marginal, the likes of which have never been seen before in England. All five parties have reasons to be optimistic but as of now, I and most other forecasters make the Greens favourites to win the 2025 WECA mayoralty. With an election this tight, the parties get-out-the-vote efforts will play a big part in the final outcome.

All forecasts, charts & tables are based on the latest polls as of 26th April 2025.

UK Local Elections #2A – 2025 West England Mayoral Election – My Initial Forecast

April 13, 2025 By Nigel

The West England Combined Authority (WECA) Metro Mayor election of 2025 will probably be won with less than a quarter of all votes cast. My analysis shows it is a 5-way marginal, the likes of which have never been seen in England before. Why no-one has polled WECA is a mystery because this is shaping up to be one of the most unpredictable elections I’ve ever seen.

My forecast puts the Greens first with 24% but it also puts Reform, Lib Dems & Labour just behind with each on 20% and the Conservative and Independent candidates bringing up the rear. I am using a weighted average of four models of which 2 have Labour winning, 1 has the Greens winning and the 4th model (with the highest weight) has Reform winning. That’s how unpredictable the election is and why we need a WECA specific opinion poll!

This article is based on polls as of 7th April 2025. My updated forecast based on polls as of 26th April can be found here.

UK General Election 2024 #1 – Going beyond the swing

February 18, 2024 By Nigel

Labour is on course for a crushing landslide later this year… or are they? Many parallels with 1997 are being drawn at the moment but it’s too early to be making detailed forecasts. Instead, I want to lay the foundations for my election forecast later this year by looking at what 100 years of UK electoral history is telling me. I tell this story by assigning probabilities to 10 specific outcomes of interest and finish by explaining why 2024 is more likely to be a repeat of 2001 than 1997.

I remind you I was deemed the most accurate forecaster of the 2019 general election. This article is the first in what I hope will be a series of articles which lead me to hold on to that accolade!

UK Local Elections #1 – My West England Metro Mayor 2021 Election Forecast

May 2, 2021 By Nigel

It will be close but I am predicting that the Conservatives will hold onto the West England Combined Authority Metropolitan Mayoralty on 6th May 2021. By rights, they should not be winning but the 3 parties opposing them do not seem to understand the subtleties of the Supplementary Vote (SV) that is used in this election and they will end up splitting their votes to their detriment.

UK General Elections #6 – Keir Starmer’s train to Downing Street

March 21, 2021 By Nigel

Keir Starmer has to match what Clement Attlee did in 1945 and beat what Tony Blair did in 1997 if he wants to form a Labour government at the next election. To arrive at Downing Street by the end of 2024, Starmer must get his party to board an InterCity 125 train and spend the next 3 years following the tracks I lay out in this article. As I will show, whichever track they take has to go through 125 English Conservative seats, most of which are in between cities. Hence InterCity 125 becomes the easy to remember name of Labour’s list of target seats.