Originally posted on 19th February 2017. I then added an updated forecast on 22nd February which can be seen at the bottom of this post.
If UKIP want to supplant Labour in the North England, they must win Stoke-on-Trent Central to kickstart this trend and the odds are 2 to 1 that they will win. That is my forecast after running my by-election model on Stoke-on-Trent Central. For more details about the methodology, please read my description of how I forecast by-elections in the Brexit era.
My model uses both the breakdown of the 2015 General Election results when Labour held the seat with a 16% majority on a 50% turnout (the 2nd lowest turnout in the whole of the UK in 2015) and the 2016 EU referendum result where I estimate that Leave won with 71% of the vote on a 60% turnout. This makes this seat the 17th most Leave seat in the UK and it is worth noting that its two neighbours were #22 (Stoke South) & #3 (Stoke North). In % terms, the increase in number of voters in 2016 was the 22nd highest in the UK and has created a substantial Non-GE segment of 17% of 2016 voters that have the potential to influence the by-election. Whether these non-voters from 2015 will vote in the by-election is one of the big uncertainties and it will be fascinating to see if they do.
[Read more…] about By-Election Forecast #2 – Stoke-on-Trent Central, Staffordshire
