UK General Election - May 7th 2015

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

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As suggested above, I would expect Lib Dem defectors to generally break towards Labour.

The Tories would have won Bolton West if the boundaries were the same as they were in Major's day.  (I was an elector in Bolton West in 2010.)

Bolton West contains Bolton's last remaining Lib Dem ward, the middle-class area of Smithills, and it's telling that the Lib Dems are coming under severe pressure there from Labour, who have never won the ward and were running a very poor third until 2008.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Conservatives 36%
Labour 33%
Liberal Democrats 14%
UK Independence Party 9%
Others 8%

Tories 294 seats, Labour 291, Lib Dems 36, UKIP 0, Others 29

Anyone's guess what will happen if the result is anything like this. Clegg would probably step down though to be replaced by Farren as another coalition with Clegg there would do the LibDems nothing but more harm.

294 + 36 = 330 = very tenuous continuation of the coalition. Both Clegg and Cameron have the benefit of incumbency. Cameron could probably quit in his own time under those numbers if he keeps his promise to hold an EU referendum, which will encourage Conservative MPs to keep backing him and the coalition; Clegg steps down once the Lib Dems quit government, to serve as scapegoat for the sins of the coalition. Therefore, Labour and Lib Dems would vote against a Tory minority. I think if the Lib Dems get 36 seats, they'll be delighted, not in a mood for decapitation. I think they are more likely to get about 20 seats.

This is the article ( http://www.iaindale.com/posts/2014/02/05/why-the-libdem-seats-will-win-30-35-seats-in-2015 ) I'm basing my prediction of 36 LibDem seats on. Iain Dale is a Tory supporting journalist so he's no particular friend of the Libs.

I think he's being way too kind to the Scottish Lib Dems here. Predictions like Danny Alexander's seat being a "Definite Lib Dem Hold", seems to be way out of the mark - in the 2011 the Lib Dems fell to fourth place in Inverness and Bairn; and were eviscerated in the (proportional!) council. See also Gordon - which in 2015 will have no incumbent - marked as safe.

Anyone who knows anything about Highland voting patterns knows not to draw too many conclusions from local elections.  The independent vote is too high.  Aberdeenshire, on the other hand, is more party political.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

The effect of "fracking" at the next election (for the attention of Mr. Teale)

I can't seriously believe that Bolton West will be a Tory gain due to the possibility of fracking.  Don't forget, this constituency has a coalmining history.  Walk around Westhoughton town centre and you will see a large number of memorials to the dead of the Pretoria Pit explosion of 1910, which killed more Westhoughtonians than the two world wars.  Within the boundaries of the Duchy of Smithills itself there are some scanty remains of a coalmine hidden on the broad top of Winter Hill.  We all know what's down there under the ground.  Fracking seems to me safer than sending people into the earth to get the coal out.

I'm also not convinced by arguments over fracking polluting the water supply.  In the North West we don't use groundwater, so far as I am aware, to any significant extent; there's quite enough rain to fill our reservoirs all year round.

What fracking does have the possibility to do is revitalise places like Westhoughton, which badly need something to give their economies a kickstart.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

There's a few mistakes in this map I can think of.  Granadaland included all of Morecambe Bay and the coast of North Wales (stand next to the main Granada transmitter on Winter Hill and you can see Anglesey on a good day).  Lincoln, famously, was split between two TV regions: uphill Lincoln was covered by Yorkshire, downhill Lincoln by Central.  There were in fact two HTV regions (HTV Wales and HTV West).

Nonetheless, not a bad starting point.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

I'll be voting for the first time in Bolton South East.  Safe Labour seat, nothing to see here and I don't think any of the other parties have even selected a candidate yet.

Last time I voted in Bolton West which turned out to be a knife-edge marginal.