#GE2015 Forecast (NOV 30th)

most recently on 30 November 2014 at 10:38. To read commentary on the election using these forecasts, follow Election4castUK on Twitter. If you would like to give us feedback on this forecast, please email us at feedback@electionforecast.co.uk

The following tables focuses on potential seat gains and losses for each of the parties, including only those seats for which the probability of a change of control is estimated at over 10%. If the table is blank, there are currently no such seats.

Conservatives:	Gains	Losses
Labour:	Gains	Losses
Liberal Democrats:	Gains	Losses
SNP:	Gains	Losses
Plaid Cymru:	Gains	Losses
Greens:	Gains	Losses
UKIP:	Gains	Losses

The following table provides the individual seat predictions, aggregated up to England, Scotland and Wales. Please note that these may not exactly match the totals in the main forecast table, as they are based on the individual seat forecasts..

	Con	Lab	LD	SNP	PC	GRN	UKIP	Oth
England	276	228	24	0	0	1	3	1
Scotland	1	24	2	32	0	0	0	0
Wales	7	29	2	0	2	0	0	0

The following table provides the individual seat predictions (columns), aggregated by the party that won the seat at the 2010 general election (rows). Please note that these may not exactly match the totals in the main forecast table, as they are based on the individual seat forecasts..

	Con	Lab	LD	SNP	PC	GRN	UKIP	Oth
2010 Con	272	31	0	0	0	0	3	0
2010 Lab	1	239	0	18	0	0	0	0
2010 LD	11	10	28	8	0	0	0	0
2010 SNP	0	0	0	6	0	0	0	0
2010 PC	0	1	0	0	2	0	0	0
2010 GRN	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0
2010 UKIP	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2010 Oth	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1

Party	Lo	Seats	Hi	Swing
Conservatives	237	282	324	-24
Labour	238	281	326	23
Liberal Democrats	18	27	38	-30
SNP	23	33	45	27
Plaid Cymru	1	3	5	0
Greens	0	1	2	0
UKIP	1	4	8	4
Other	1	1	1	0

#GE2015 Forecast update: 28 November 2014

Another mixed bag of polls this week: cherry-pick your favourite and you can claim anything from a 5-point Labour lead to a 1-point Conservative one. Lump them together in our polling average, though, and the result is a Labour lead of 1.
The Tories have lost the point they gained last week, taking them back down to 32%, while Labour remain on 33% for the fifth week in a row. UKIP are the beneficiaries of the Tory fall, up a point to 16% – perhaps as a result of their second by-election win last Thursday.
In our forecast, that means a small shift from the Tories to Labour. The Conservatives are still the slight favourites to be the largest party in May, but their chances are down from 58% last week to 53% now. Labour’s are up from 42% to 47%.
Our central forecast tightens again: it now has the Tories winning the popular vote by 3.5 points, enough to give them 5 more seats than Labour (298 to 293).
With the forecast tightening and time running out for one party to break ahead, the chances of a Hung Parliament are now up to 57%.

Date of forecast: 28 November 2014
Days till the election: 160
Inputted current average poll shares
Con: 32%
Lab: 33%
LD: 8%
Others (inc. UKIP): 27%
– UKIP: 16%
Forecast Election Day Shares (with 95% Prediction Intervals)
Con: 34.4% (±6.7, i.e. 28% – 41%)
Lab: 30.9% (±5.0, i.e. 26% – 36%)
LD: 10.9% (±6.7, i.e. 4% – 18%)
Implied point estimate shares for:
– Others (inc. UKIP): 23.8%
– UKIP: 14.1%
Forecast Election Day Seats (with approximate 95% Prediction Intervals)
Con: 298 (226 – 380)
Lab: 293 (216 – 361)
LD: 28 (23 – 34)
(Prediction intervals assume LD & others shares at central forecast, Con & Lab shares vary as per prediction intervals)
Central forecast: Con largest party, but short of a majority by 28
Approximate probabilities of key outcomes
Con largest: 53%
… with a majority: 23%
Lab largest: 47%
… with a majority: 20%
Hung Parliament: 57%
… with Con largest: 29%
… with Lab largest: 28%
(probabilities may not sum due to rounding)

#GE2015 Forecast (NOV 27th)

most recently on 27 November 2014 at 15:14. To read commentary on the election using these forecasts, follow Election4castUK on Twitter. If you would like to give us feedback on this forecast, please email us at feedback@electionforecast.co.uk

The following tables focuses on potential seat gains and losses for each of the parties, including only those seats for which the probability of a change of control is estimated at over 10%. If the table is blank, there are currently no such seats.

Conservatives:	Gains	Losses
Labour:	Gains	Losses
Liberal Democrats:	Gains	Losses
SNP:	Gains	Losses
Plaid Cymru:	Gains	Losses
Greens:	Gains	Losses
UKIP:	Gains	Losses

The following table provides the individual seat predictions, aggregated up to England, Scotland and Wales. Please note that these may not exactly match the totals in the main forecast table, as they are based on the individual seat forecasts..

	Con	Lab	LD	SNP	PC	GRN	UKIP	Oth
England	277	227	24	0	0	1	3	1
Scotland	2	22	1	34	0	0	0	0
Wales	7	29	2	0	2	0	0	0

The following table provides the individual seat predictions (columns), aggregated by the party that won the seat at the 2010 general election (rows). Please note that these may not exactly match the totals in the main forecast table, as they are based on the individual seat forecasts..

	Con	Lab	LD	SNP	PC	GRN	UKIP	Oth
2010 Con	273	30	0	0	0	0	3	0
2010 Lab	1	236	0	21	0	0	0	0
2010 LD	12	11	27	7	0	0	0	0
2010 SNP	0	0	0	6	0	0	0	0
2010 PC	0	1	0	0	2	0	0	0
2010 GRN	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0
2010 UKIP	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2010 Oth	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1

 

Party	Lo	Seats	Hi	Swing
Conservatives	242	285	325	-21
Labour	238	280	321	22
Liberal Democrats	18	27	38	-30
SNP	23	32	42	26
Plaid Cymru	1	2	4	-1
Greens	0	1	2	0
UKIP	1	4	9	4
Other	1	1	1	0

#GE2015 Forecast (NOV 26th)

most recently on 26 November 2014 at 14:55. To read commentary on the election using these forecasts, follow Election4castUK on Twitter. If you would like to give us feedback on this forecast, please email us at feedback@electionforecast.co.uk

When reading our seat predictions, please keep in mind that our model may not know as much about your specific seat of interest as you do. The model knows how the general patterns of support across the UK have changed in constituencies with different kinds of political, geographic and demographic characteristics. The model uses the Ashcroft constituency polls where available, plus smaller samples of polling data for every constituency, extracted from pooling many national-level polls. However, the model does not know whether your MP is beloved by constituents or embroiled in scandal, nor does it know whether Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage is standing in your constituency, let alone what the implications of that might be. Some of this might be picked up in the polls, but not all of it will be, and we do not have much polling data to go on when it comes to constituencies. In the aggregate, these aspects of constituency-specific competition tend to average out across parties, but they certainly matter in individual constituencies. Think of our seat-level projections as a baseline for what you might expect from past election results, geography and demography, plus a little bit of polling data.

Sortable table of predicted vote share for every party in every seat.

Sortable table of predicted probability of victory for every party in every seat.

The following tables focuses on potential seat gains and losses for each of the parties, including only those seats for which the probability of a change of control is estimated at over 10%. If the table is blank, there are currently no such seats.

Conservatives:	Gains	Losses
Labour:	Gains	Losses
Liberal Democrats:	Gains	Losses
SNP:	Gains	Losses
Plaid Cymru:	Gains	Losses
Greens:	Gains	Losses
UKIP:	Gains	Losses

The following table provides the individual seat predictions, aggregated up to England, Scotland and Wales. Please note that these may not exactly match the totals in the main forecast table, as they are based on the individual seat forecasts..

	Con	Lab	LD	SNP	PC	GRN	UKIP	Oth
England	276	231	22	0	0	1	2	1
Scotland	3	22	1	33	0	0	0	0
Wales	8	30	1	0	1	0	0	0

The following table provides the individual seat predictions (columns), aggregated by the party that won the seat at the 2010 general election (rows). Please note that these may not exactly match the totals in the main forecast table, as they are based on the individual seat forecasts..

	Con	Lab	LD	SNP	PC	GRN	UKIP	Oth
2010 Con	272	32	0	0	0	0	2	0
2010 Lab	0	237	0	21	0	0	0	0
2010 LD	15	12	24	6	0	0	0	0
2010 SNP	0	0	0	6	0	0	0	0
2010 PC	0	2	0	0	1	0	0	0
2010 GRN	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0
2010 UKIP	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2010 Oth	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1

 

Party	Lo	Seats	Hi	Swing
Conservatives	239	284	326	-22
Labour	242	284	329	26
Liberal Democrats	14	24	36	-33
SNP	23	33	43	27
Plaid Cymru	0	2	4	-1
Greens	0	1	2	0
UKIP	1	3	7	3
Other	1	1	1	0

#GE2015 Forecast (NOV 24th)

most recently on 24 November 2014 at 17:57. To read commentary on the election using these forecasts, follow Election4castUK on Twitter. If you would like to give us feedback on this forecast, please email us at feedback@electionforecast.co.uk

When reading our seat predictions, please keep in mind that our model may not know as much about your specific seat of interest as you do. The model knows how the general patterns of support across the UK have changed in constituencies with different kinds of political, geographic and demographic characteristics. The model uses the Ashcroft constituency polls where available, plus smaller samples of polling data for every constituency, extracted from pooling many national-level polls. However, the model does not know whether your MP is beloved by constituents or embroiled in scandal, nor does it know whether Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage is standing in your constituency, let alone what the implications of that might be. Some of this might be picked up in the polls, but not all of it will be, and we do not have much polling data to go on when it comes to constituencies. In the aggregate, these aspects of constituency-specific competition tend to average out across parties, but they certainly matter in individual constituencies. Think of our seat-level projections as a baseline for what you might expect from past election results, geography and demography, plus a little bit of polling data.

Sortable table of predicted vote share for every party in every seat.

Sortable table of predicted probability of victory for every party in every seat.

The following tables focuses on potential seat gains and losses for each of the parties, including only those seats for which the probability of a change of control is estimated at over 10%. If the table is blank, there are currently no such seats.

Conservatives:	Gains	Losses
Labour:	Gains	Losses
Liberal Democrats:	Gains	Losses
SNP:	Gains	Losses
Plaid Cymru:	Gains	Losses
Greens:	Gains	Losses
UKIP:	Gains	Losses

The following table provides the individual seat predictions, aggregated up to England, Scotland and Wales. Please note that these may not exactly match the totals in the main forecast table, as they are based on the individual seat forecasts..

	Con	Lab	LD	SNP	PC	GRN	UKIP	Oth
England	276	230	22	0	0	1	3	1
Scotland	3	22	1	33	0	0	0	0
Wales	8	30	1	0	1	0	0	0

The following table provides the individual seat predictions (columns), aggregated by the party that won the seat at the 2010 general election (rows). Please note that these may not exactly match the totals in the main forecast table, as they are based on the individual seat forecasts..

	Con	Lab	LD	SNP	PC	GRN	UKIP	Oth
2010 Con	272	31	0	0	0	0	3	0
2010 Lab	0	237	0	21	0	0	0	0
2010 LD	15	12	24	6	0	0	0	0
2010 SNP	0	0	0	6	0	0	0	0
2010 PC	0	2	0	0	1	0	0	0
2010 GRN	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0
2010 UKIP	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2010 Oth	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1

 

Party	Lo	Seats	Hi	Swing
Conservatives	240	283	326	-23
Labour	243	284	328	26
Liberal Democrats	14	24	36	-33
SNP	23	33	43	27
Plaid Cymru	0	2	4	-1
Greens	0	1	2	0
UKIP	1	4	7	4
Other	1	1	1	0

#GE2015 Forecast (NOV 23rd)

most recently on 23 November 2014 at 09:13. To read commentary on the election using these forecasts, follow Election4castUK on Twitter. If you would like to give us feedback on this forecast, please email us at feedback@electionforecast.co.uk

• And now the party forecast...
  • Conservatives. Holding steady over the past fortnight. Seat loss probable. Majority very unlikely. Plurality possible.
  • Labour. Holding steady. Seat gain very likely. Majority very unlikely. Plurality possible.
  • Liberal Democrats. Holding steady. Seat loss almost certain.
  • SNP. Holding steady. Seat gain almost certain.
  • Plaid Cymru. Holding steady. Seat loss probable.
  • Greens. Holding steady. Seat loss unlikely.
  • UKIP. Holding steady. Seat gain almost certain.
  • The following tables focuses on potential seat gains and losses for each of the parties, including only those seats for which the probability of a change of control is estimated at over 10%. If the table is blank, there are currently no such seats.
    

    Conservatives:	Gains	Losses
    Labour:	Gains	Losses
    Liberal Democrats:	Gains	Losses
    SNP:	Gains	Losses
    Plaid Cymru:	Gains	Losses
    Greens:	Gains	Losses
    UKIP:	Gains	Losses

    The following table provides the individual seat predictions, aggregated up to England, Scotland and Wales. Please note that these may not exactly match the totals in the main forecast table, as they are based on the individual seat forecasts..
    

    	Con	Lab	LD	SNP	PC	GRN	UKIP	Oth
    England	279	228	21	0	0	1	3	1
    Scotland	3	21	1	34	0	0	0	0
    Wales	8	30	1	0	1	0	0	0

    The following table provides the individual seat predictions (columns), aggregated by the party that won the seat at the 2010 general election (rows). Please note that these may not exactly match the totals in the main forecast table, as they are based on the individual seat forecasts..
    

    	Con	Lab	LD	SNP	PC	GRN	UKIP	Oth
    2010 Con	273	30	0	0	0	0	3	0
    2010 Lab	1	235	0	22	0	0	0	0
    2010 LD	16	12	23	6	0	0	0	0
    2010 SNP	0	0	0	6	0	0	0	0
    2010 PC	0	2	0	0	1	0	0	0
    2010 GRN	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0
    2010 UKIP	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
    2010 Oth	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1

     

 

Party	Lo	Seats	Hi	Swing
Conservatives	242	286	328	-20
Labour	241	281	324	23
Liberal Democrats	14	24	36	-33
SNP	23	33	43	27
Plaid Cymru	1	2	4	-1
Greens	0	1	2	0
UKIP	1	4	8	4
Other	1	1	1	0

#GE2015 Forecast NOV 21st 2014

The Conservatives have pulled level with Labour in the polls, for the first time since the ‘omnishambles’ Budget of March 2012. Our polling average now has both parties on 33% – an improvement of 1 point for the Tories and no change for Labour since last week.
It puts the Tories in their strongest position in our forecast since June. We now give them a 58% chance of winning the most seats, up from 54% last week. Labour’s chances are down from 46% to 42%.
A Hung Parliament is still the most likely outcome, with a 54% chance (down a touch from 56% last week). The Tories’ chances of a majority are up to 29% (from 25%) while Labour’s are down to 17% (from 19%), their lowest since May.
Our central forecast now has the Tories winning 35.2% of the vote, 4.3 points ahead of Labour on 30.9%. That should be enough to give the Tories the most seats (305, to Labour’s 288), but still leave them 21 seats short of a majority.

http://electionsetc.com/2014/11/21/forecast-update-21-november-2014/

UK ELECTION TREND (NOV 17th)

Which party benefits the most from a five-party contested election? According to the model, it's actually the Liberal Democrats, who have consistently been highly rated to remain in government as a coalition partner despite losing a lot of seats.

This is due to the Liberal Democrats having some high concentration seats that they can defend even with huge losses nationally. Which raises the question to what UKIP's density distribution will be? The model uses 2010's distribution, which is practically even across the country, and so puts them at a huge disadvantage to the other parties that concentrate their voters into geographic regions. UKIP has to get a large swing to pick up any seats, of course if they did it'd be a wave of seats being won by them. That's very unlikely, and the model doesn't think they'll win any seats except for the handful of weird edge cases.

But that's just based on an assumption that the 2010 distribution will carry over to 2015. Which may or may not be true as UKIP pick up more votes. The distribution of 3% may well be quite different to the distribution of 14%, and other projections try to assign a non-uniform regional distribution. But there's a major problem with doing that; there's little data to use to generate that distribution. The most recent remotely comparable election was the European elections. However, that merely showed that UKIP was approximately evenly distributed across most of England excluding London and the North East. Combined with the EU elections being very low turn-out and tilted towards protest votes, this makes it a low value data-point. So really, there's just no way to know how a UKIP Vote of around 14% would be distributed across the country.

Change log for bug-fixes to the model. The random distribution in the simulation is now being shaped to match the way recent polling's distribution is skewed. The standard distribution of the random simulations have been reduced a bit to match a higher average sample size of polling than had been assumed. This reduces Labour and Conservative chances of a majority. Hopefully this is the last change to the mechanics of the model. The model has now been run on back-dated data to populate the history page.

http://ukelectiontrend.blogspot.co.uk/

2015 UK Parliamentary Election Forecast (13th NOV)

13 November 2014 at 13:58. To read commentary on the election using these forecasts, follow Election4castUK on Twitter. If you would like to give us feedback on this forecast, please email us at feedback@electionforecast.co.uk

When reading our seat predictions, please keep in mind that our model may not know as much about your specific seat of interest as you do. The model knows how the general patterns of support across the UK have changed in constituencies with different kinds of political, geographic and demographic characteristics. The model uses the Ashcroft constituency polls where available, plus smaller samples of polling data for every constituency, extracted from pooling many national-level polls. However, the model does not know whether your MP is beloved by constituents or embroiled in scandal, nor does it know whether Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage is standing in your constituency, let alone what the implications of that might be. Some of this might be picked up in the polls, but not all of it will be, and we do not have much polling data to go on when it comes to constituencies. In the aggregate, these aspects of constituency-specific competition tend to average out across parties, but they certainly matter in individual constituencies. Think of our seat-level projections as a baseline for what you might expect from past election results, geography and demography, plus a little bit of polling data.

Sortable table of predicted vote share for every party in every seat.

Sortable table of predicted probability of victory for every party in every seat.

The following tables focuses on potential seat gains and losses for each of the parties, including only those seats for which the probability of a change of control is estimated at over 10%. If the table is blank, there are currently no such seats.

Conservatives:	Gains	Losses
Labour:	Gains	Losses
Liberal Democrats:	Gains	Losses
SNP:	Gains	Losses
Plaid Cymru:	Gains	Losses
Greens:	Gains	Losses
UKIP:	Gains

The following table provides the individual seat-predictions, aggregated up to England, Scotland and Wales. Please note that these may not exactly match the totals in the main forecast table, as they are based on the individual seat forecasts..

	Con	Lab	LD	SNP	PC	GRN	UKIP	Oth
England	280	232	16	0	0	1	3	1
Scotland	2	19	0	38	0	0	0	0
Wales	8	28	1	0	3	0	0	0

 

Party	Lo	Seats	Hi	Swing
Conservatives	237	286	336	-20
Labour	234	284	332	26
Liberal Democrats	10	19	32	-38
SNP	23	35	45	29
Plaid Cymru	1	2	4	-1
Greens	0	1	1	0
UKIP	1	4	7	4
Other	1	1	1	0

UK Election trends Latest #GE2015 Forecast

This halloween polls made scary reading for Labour, SNP taking more seats in Scotland*, one poll even putting the Conservatives one point ahead, but how does the model digest them? Well, it still predicts Labour as largest party, just with a mildly reduced chance of majority.

How can this be? Quite simple, the model includes a "Reversion to the Mean" assumption, that says there's a pull back towards the last polling result that needs to be overcome with momentum. The "Reversion to the Mean" has been quite a strong benefit to Conservative figures over just looking at a poll average. But it would be silly if we assumed that there would always be a "Reversion to the Mean" of this kind, because then governments would never change hands.

So there are three things that stand against "Reversion to the Mean". First is the momentum of the polling, which either offsets against it, or re-enforces it when the incumbent has the momentum. Second is the assumption that "Reversion to the Mean" is weaker when consumer confidence is low. And third is the constant progress of time, eroding the weight of "Reversion to the Mean"'s effect on the prediction.

The consumer confidence component also means that when GFK/NOP's consumer confidence index went from -1% to -2% today, Labour actually had a minor uptick in the prediction against one run yesterday. Remembering of course, that "Reversion to the Mean" is still against Labour at this point.

* Scottish specific Polling is monitored by the model to estimate seats that the SNP run in.

 

http://ukelectiontrend.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/this-halloween-polls-made-scary-reading.html 

#GE2015 Forecast update: 31 October 2014

Labour are now at their lowest in the polls since 2010. They’ve dropped to 33% in our polling average this week, from 34% last week.
The story of the last year has been that while Labour have fallen in the polls pretty much in line with historical trends, the Conservatives have failed to make up ground as our model expected. That’s true again this week, with the Conservatives on 32%, unchanged from last week. The Lib Dems are down a point to 7%, while UKIP stay on 16%.
So what does that mean for our forecast? Labour’s fall in the polls shifts it a little towards the Tories, who now have a 55% chance of winning the most seats (up from 51% last week). Labour’s chances of being the largest party are down from 49% to 45%.
The Tories chances of securing a majority are up to 27%, while the likelihood of a Labour majority is down to 19% – the lowest since May.
With the two largest parties forecast separated by just a point and only polling 65% between them, a hung parliament remains slightly more likely than not. Our model now says there’s a 54% chance of neither party winning a majority (down a touch from 55% last week).
In our central forecast, the Tories win 34.6% of the vote to Labour’s 30.7%, with UKIP on 13.9% and the Lib Dems on 10.3%. That would leave the Tories on 302 seats, ahead of Labour on 291 but 24 short of a majority.

Date of forecast: 31 October 2014
Days till the election: 188
Inputted current average poll shares
Con: 32%
Lab: 33%
LD: 7%
Others (inc. UKIP): 28%
– UKIP: 16%
Forecast Election Day Shares (with 95% Prediction Intervals)
Con: 34.6% (±6.9, i.e. 28% – 41%)
Lab: 30.7% (±5.2, i.e. 26% – 36%)
LD: 10.3% (±7.1, i.e. 3% – 17%)
Implied point estimate shares for:
– Others (inc. UKIP): 24.4%
– UKIP: 13.9%
Forecast Election Day Seats (with approximate 95% Prediction Intervals)
Con: 302 (227 – 386)
Lab: 291 (211 – 361)
LD: 26 (21 – 32)
(Prediction intervals assume LD & others shares at central forecast, Con & Lab shares vary as per prediction intervals)
Central forecast: Con largest party, but short of a majority by 24
Approximate probabilities of key outcomes
Con largest: 55%
… with a majority: 27%
Lab largest: 45%
… with a majority: 19%
Hung Parliament: 54%
… with Con largest: 28%
… with Lab largest: 26%
(probabilities may not sum due to rounding)