{"id":370,"date":"2017-05-21T18:10:46","date_gmt":"2017-05-21T17:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/?p=370"},"modified":"2019-02-09T11:08:33","modified_gmt":"2019-02-09T11:08:33","slug":"uk-general-election-2017-forecast-by-seat-1-bath-south-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/uk-general-election-2017-forecast-by-seat-1-bath-south-west\/","title":{"rendered":"UK General Election 2017 Seat Forecast #1 – Bath, South West"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post\u00a0was\u00a0first published on 29th April 2017 and predicted\u00a0a\u00a0narrow Conservative Hold.\u00a0 I updated this post on 21st May 2017 to\u00a0take\u00a0into account latest data.<\/em><\/p>\n

Welcome to the first of my constituency forecasts for the 2017 General Election.\u00a0 I’ve chosen to start with the seat of Bath currently held by the Conservatives for two reasons.\u00a0 First, it is where I live so I have a personal interest!\u00a0 Second, it is the bell-weather seat for the Liberal Democrats when it comes to the success of the anti-Brexit strategy.\u00a0 Fail to take Bath and they can kiss goodbye to any chance of making the election a success.<\/p>\n

MY FORECAST – Lib Dem GAIN but still very marginal<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

This seat is too close to call for reasons that will become clear.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Let’s start off by looking at the history of the\u00a0seat.\u00a0 The Lib Dems first won this seat in 1992, unseating the Conservative party chairman Chris Patten, and by 2010 they had turned it into their 3rd safest seat.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to protect them from the Tory Tsunami in the South West in 2015 and the Conservatives managed to regain the seat.\u00a0 In 2016, Bath voted 66% Remain in the referendum making this seat one of the ultra-Remain seats in Britain i.e. it was the 50th most Remain comfortably putting it in the top decile.\u00a0 Bath is in fact the most remain seat outside of the major cities.<\/p>\n

Those of you who have seen my by-election predictions will be familiar with my use of the Lord Ashcroft “exit poll” to segment the referendum vote.\u00a0 If you are not, then please read my by-election forecasting model <\/a>post to familiarise yourself with the segments shown in the table.\u00a0 I have made a few tweaks but the model is essentially the same.\u00a0 Since Bath is an ultra-Remain seat, the pro-EU segment is much large than normal accounting for 21% of the electorate in Bath.\"\"<\/p>\n

My general election forecasts are shown at the bottom of the table.\u00a0\u00a05 forecasts are shown which are labelled as follows:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. URS<\/strong> – Uniform Regional Swing model based on chart R1 of my Opinion Poll Tracker<\/a>.\u00a0 This will no longer be my main forecast<\/li>\n
  2. URS+S<\/strong><\/span> – my URS forecast modified for parties standing down which is explained in my North Norfolk prediction<\/a>.\u00a0 This is now my main forecast model.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n
  3. URS+T<\/strong><\/span> – my URS forecast + Standown\u00a0plus my tactical voting model and is my alternative forecasting model.<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. EU16R<\/strong><\/span> – my Brexit Realignment model based on my by-election forecasting model <\/a>but with some tweaks.\u00a0 My Kensington<\/a> & Bishop Auckland<\/a> seat forecasts are good examples of where these dynamics may come into play.\u00a0 For now, I am not regarding this as a forecast, rather it is a sense check for my other forecasts.<\/li>\n
  5. nURS<\/strong> – Non Uniform Regional Swing model which was first explored in my Cardiff South & Penarth prediction<\/a>\u00a0and expanded upon in my Edinburgh South prediction<\/a>.\u00a0 This model is still under development but it\u00a0has a\u00a0good chance of\u00a0replacing both my URS+S and URS+T model.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I will explain each model in turn.<\/p>\n

    1. URS – Uniform Regional Swing<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

    My URS forecast is for a Conservative hold and an increased majority.\u00a0 This\u00a0is derived by adding the changes shown in\u00a0Chart R2 below\u00a0to the 2015 General Election results.\u00a0 Chart R2 shows the\u00a0main change predicted\u00a0since 2015 is a\u00a0UKIP to Conservative swing of 8%\u00a0whilst\u00a0the Lib Dems have made very little progress.\u00a0 I suspect what progress they have made has come from Green voters switching to them in the South West.\u00a0 Labour has made some gains in the South West since the election was called as shown by\u00a0Chart R3 but\u00a0it should be noted that the South West is Labour’s weakest region in any case.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    In Bath’s case, UKIP only had 6% of the vote last time around so a 9% fall in their vote would take them into negative territory.\u00a0 To avoid this issue, every party has a floor vote beyond which it cannot sink in my URS model.\u00a0 For the Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems it is 5%, for UKIP and the Greens it is 1%.\u00a0 Therefore in Bath, I have only used a 5% swing from UKIP to the Conservatives in my URS forecast.<\/p>\n

    2. URS+S – URS plus Party Stand Down Adjustment<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

    My URS+S forecast is also for a Conservative Hold.\u00a0 In Bath, both URS+S and URS forecasts are more or less the \"\"same since UKIP are the only party not standing in 2017 and they only had 1% of the vote in my URS forecast.\u00a0 As explained in more depth in my North Norfolk forecast, URS+S is derived by first calculating the URS forecast and asking the question, what will the residual voters for parties\u00a0not standing (UKIP in this case)\u00a0do?\u00a0 As shown in the table, I have made the assumption that 70% of UKIP voters will vote Conservative and 30% Labour.\u00a0 The URS forecast is then recalculated by adding the reallocated voters in the proportions shown to the parties still standing.<\/p>\n

    Note that the Conservatives, Labour, Nationalists and Lib Dems are standing in every seat bar the Speaker’s seat of Buckingham and 2 seats where the Lib Dems have stood down.\u00a0 Therefore, the only reallocations we have to worry about are for UKIP, Green and Others.<\/p>\n

    3. URS +\u00a0S + Tactical Voting Model<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

    The one saving grace for the Lib Dems in Bath is that this is a seat where it does not need much tactical voting for them to win the seat.\u00a0 If Brexit realignment is a reality, then the Lib Dems have no choice but to rely on tactical voting.\u00a0 I have already seen some advice to voters on social media about where to cast tactical votes<\/a> but from what I have read, there is a lot of wishful thinking going on and the potential gains to the Lib Dems maybe smaller than hoped for.<\/p>\n

    Let’s start with the 2015 results in Bath.\u00a0 The premise of tactical voting is that Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters will be willing to support the party out of these 3 that is most likely to defeat the Conservatives.\u00a0 If we add these 3 parties in 2015, we end up with a total of 55% which is an outright majority which is an easy win for such a “progressive alliance” with the Lib Dems being the beneficiary here.\u00a0 If we assume that in 2017, there has been no swing since 2015 but Brexit is a major issue, then before we declare victory for the tactical voters, we have to ask what the Conservatives’ counter attack will look like.\u00a0 It doesn’t take much to realise what it will involve, it will be a straight appeal to UKIP voters along the lines of “Look at the\u00a0metropolitan liberal elites trying to sabotage Brexit! Vote for us to stop this<\/em>“.\u00a0 The polls show that this dynamic will work.<\/p>\n

    Therefore, when totting up the “progressive alliance” votes in a constituency, you also need to tot up the “counter attack” votes as well which is the Conservatives plus UKIP.\u00a0 In Bath, this would have been 44% in 2015 so the “progressive alliance” wins PROVIDED all Lab\/LD\/Grn voters vote for the leading party.\u00a0 Let’s suppose that all Greens vote for the Lib Dems and all UKIP voters vote for the Conservatives, then based on 2015 result, this would put the Lib Dems on 42% and the Conservatives on 44%.\u00a0 Then it would only need 3% from the Labour 14% to defect to the Lib Dems e.g. Lab15 Pro-EU, and the Conservatives are defeated.\u00a0 But what if Labour Leave voters also hear the Conservative counter attack message as well?\u00a0 At 4% of Bath voters, if they defect to the Conservatives, the Tories hold on.<\/p>\n

    There are a myriad of permutations that can be played out but I have settled on the following Tactical Voting Model.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Get a baseline forecast which could be URS, URS+S, GE15 or EU16 Realign or some other model.<\/li>\n
    2. If the baseline forecast predicts a Conservative win then proceed to step 3 otherwise forecast is same as baseline.<\/li>\n
    3. From the baseline, identify the 2 parties from the “progressive alliance” that need to vote tactically for the leading party and total up the votes for these two parties.<\/li>\n
    4. Subtract from this total, the baseline UKIP vote.<\/li>\n
    5. The remainder is the available tactical votes.<\/li>\n
    6. Take 75% (since changed to 67%) of the available tactical votes and add these to the leading “progressive alliance” party<\/li>\n
    7. Recalculate the outcome.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Using this model in Bath, with my URS+S forecast as my baseline, results in\u00a0a URS+S+Tactical forecast\u00a0of a\u00a0Lib Dem gain.\u00a0 From my URS+S baseline, you can see that the Labour & Green vote adds up to 25%.\u00a0 UKIP has stood down in this seat and their vote has been taken into account in the URS+S forecast so the available tactical votes remains 25%.\u00a0 The Lib Dems only need 14% of this chunk to win the seat and since I am using 75% of 25% equalling 19% as my tactical vote forecast, this means that tactical voting will result in a win for the Lib Dems.\u00a0 However, if only 50% of the available tactical votes actually vote Lib Dem then the Conservatives will hang on just.<\/p>\n

      I consider this to be a well structured model because it incorporates a Conservative counter attack element.\u00a0 I\u00a0have yet to see on social media any appreciation of the need to account for the UKIP vote when trying to work out tactical options.\u00a0 It is also unrealistic to assume that all Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters constitute single “progressive alliance” voting block.\u00a0 Labour Leavers have been shown to be culturally conservative and if they are also present in large numbers in a constituency, they have the potential to scupper the success of tactical voting.<\/p>\n

      In Welsh & Scottish seats I am not including the SNP and Plaid Cymru in the “progressive alliance”.\u00a0 In Scotland, I believe independence is the dominant narrative and there the SNP has to be considered separately.\u00a0 In Wales, there may be a case for including Plaid in my calculations but for now I am excluding them.<\/p>\n

      4. EU16R – Brexit Realignment and what does this\u00a0mean?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

      At this point, it is worth comparing my URS+S forecast with my EU16 Realign forecast.\u00a0 You can see that in the case of Bath, there is a surprising amount of agreement between the two models.\u00a0 My Brexit realignment model basically states what I would expect if the EU referendum was the only factor in the election and the electorate has realigned itself according to its Brexit vote.\u00a0 The colours of the 5 referendum segments for each party show where I think the voters have realigned themselves and I want to explore these in more detail.<\/p>\n

      My realignments are based extensively on the data shown in the Switching charts S1, S2 & S3 in my Opinion Poll Tracker<\/a>.<\/p>\n