UK General Election - May 7th 2015

[YL]

It's still quite a long way off, and all bets could be off if Scotland votes for independence (I don't really think that'll happen, but I'm still a bit wary of underestimating Alex Salmond).  But here are my current guesses:
- Labour the largest party, with a small majority or just short;
- Lib Dems suffer big losses, but do worse in terms of votes than seats, with their local campaigning allowing them to hold on to about 30 seats;
- UKIP do considersably better than in 2010 but not as well as current polls suggest, and struggle to gain seats; they might win one or two where they have good organisation and/or a high profile candidate (perhaps Boston & Skegness or one of the Thanets);
- Greens hold Brighton Pavilion but don't win anywhere else;
- George Galloway holds Bradford West;
- Little change for Plaid, but they might win Ceredigion back from the Lib Dems;
- SNP performance hard to predict before the referendum (a big No vote would presumably be bad for them, but a narrower one might not be) but I'll guess they might pick up a couple of seats from the Lib Dems;
- Basically no change in Northern Ireland.

[YL]

I did some calculations to investigate the vulnerability of Lib Dem seats based purely on a swing to Labour, assuming other parties stand still.  So, here's a list of the current Lib Dem seats, ordered by the size of the swing to Labour needed for the Lib Dems to lose them.  Unless otherwise stated the swing calculated causes Labour to win the seat.

Obviously those assumptions aren't going to be satisfied exactly anywhere, and they might be particularly dodgy in Scotland and Wales.  In particular I think Ceredigion is a lot less safe for the LDs than this list suggests.

Less than 5%
Solihull 0.3% (Con win)
Norwich S 0.3%
Bradford E 0.5%
Mid Dorset & North Poole 0.6% (Con win)
Wells 1.4% (Con win)
Brent C 1.5%
Manchester Withington 2.1%
Burnley 2.2%
East Dunbartonshire 2.3%
St Austell & Newquay 2.8% (Con win)
Somerton & Frome 3.0% (Con win)
Sutton & Cheam 3.3% (Con win)
Birmingham Yardley 3.7%
St Ives 3.7% (Con win)
Edinburgh W 4.1%
Argyll & Bute 4.4%
Chippenham 4.7% (Con win)

5% to 10%
Redcar 6.2%
Cheadle 6.2% (Con win)
Hornsey & Wood Green 6.2%
Cardiff C 6.3%
North Cornwall 6.4% (Con win)
Eastbourne 6.6% (Con win)
Taunton Deane 6.9% (Con win)
Berwick upon Tweed 7.0% (Con win)
Eastleigh 7.2% (Con win; ignoring by-election)
Cambridge 7.4%
Gordon 8.0%
West Aberdeenshire & Kincardine 8.2% (Con win)
Torbay 8.3% (Con win)
Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross 8.4%
Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey 9.3%
Cheltenham 9.3% (Con win)
Bermondsey & Old Southwark 9.6%
Brecon & Radnorshire 9.6% (Con win)

10% to 15%
Bristol W 10.3%
North Devon 11.3% (Con win)
Carshalton & Wallington 11.5% (Con win)
Berwickshire, Roxburghshire & Selkirk 11.6% (Con win)
Portsmouth S 12.6% (Con win)
Kingston & Surbiton 13.2% (Con win)
Leeds NW 13.2%
North East Fife 13.6%
Southport 13.8% (Con win)
Thornbury & Yate 14.8% (Con win)

More than 15%
Colchester 15.1% (Con win)
Hazel Grove 15.2% (Con win)
Lewes 15.3% (Con win)
Sheffield Hallam 18.7%
Ross, Skye & Lochaber 18.8%
Twickenham 20.3% (Con win)
Ceredigion 21.8% (Plaid win)
Yeovil 22.8% (Con win)
North Norfolk 23.4% (Con win)
Westmorland & Lonsdale 23.8% (Con win)
Bath 24.8%
Orkney & Shetland 25.7%

[YL]

Michael Ignatieff (yes, that one) saying he expects Labour to win almost by default on Daily Politics today. Kiss of death?

Well, they'll probably get a decent swing from the Lib Dems "almost by default", unless they start adopting policies which drive that sort of voter in to the arms of the Greens, and that might be enough to be the largest party, but to actually get an overall majority I think they'll need to do better than that, unless the purple peril do well and hurt the Tories substantially more than Labour.

[YL]

Labour have selected one Oliver Coppard as their PPC for Sheffield Hallam, and thus as the most likely recipient of my vote.  A pity about Arsenal.

[YL]

Labour have selected Will Straw (son of Jack) as their candidate in Rossendale & Darwen.

Also, from the General Discussion thread, Malcolm Bruce, long serving Lib Dem MP for Gordon, is retiring.

[YL]

It's reasonable to assume that there are some voters in Lib Dem/Tory battlegrounds who aren't currently saying they'll vote Lib Dem but will end up doing so on lesser of two evils grounds, but that's not going to be enough to get them up to the high teens.

If Labour do too many things which annoy me between now and May 2015 then I'll either hold my nose and vote for them anyway or vote Green.  I can't see myself voting Lib Dem again short of some fairly major changes in the party, and in particular the replacement of their candidate in my constituency (one N. Clegg).

As DL says, junior coalition partners can run into trouble, especially when they haven't been seen as getting much of what their voters wanted.  The Irish Greens are another example (and Irish Labour may be heading the same way).  So I think the situation is very different from the run-up to 2010.

[YL]

Updated feelings, with just under a year to go (amendments in bold):

It's still quite a long way off, and all bets could be off if Scotland votes for independence (I don't really think that'll happen, but I'm still a bit wary of underestimating Alex Salmond).  But here are my current guesses:
- Labour the largest party, with a small majority or just short but at the moment I'm not optimistic about them getting a majority;
- Lib Dems suffer big losses, but do worse in terms of votes than seats, with their local campaigning allowing them to hold on to about 30 seats;
- UKIP do considersably better than in 2010 but not as well as current polls suggest, and struggle to gain seats; they might win one or two where they have good organisation and/or a high profile candidate (perhaps Boston & Skegness or one of the Thanets);
- Greens hold Brighton Pavilion but don't win anywhere else;
- George Galloway holds probably loses Bradford West;
- Little change for Plaid, but they might win Ceredigion back from the Lib Dems;
- SNP performance hard to predict before the referendum (a big No vote would presumably be bad for them, but a narrower one might not be) but I'll guess they might pick up a couple of seats from the Lib Dems;
- Basically no change in Northern Ireland.

[YL]

At the moment? Conservatives just shy of a majority or able to gain a majority due to the depression in the Lib Dem votes. The potential for further Labour losses to the Conservatives is possible.

How do you see that happening, in terms of votes moving around compared with 2010?  For that to happen, I'd think that either
(a) the LD to Lab swing suggested by all polls since autumn 2010 doesn't really materialise
(b) there's a noticeable movement from Lab to Con
(c) UKIP end up hurting Lab more than Con

Any of these could happen, but I don't really see any as very likely.  I'm most concerned about (c), actually.

The reason I'm struggling to see much prospect of a Lab majority now is similar: essentially one of those would have to happen in reverse, and I don't see that as likely either.

[YL]

Probably best to give my take on it.

1. The big LD to LAB swing made sense when Labour were polling 40+. It makes less sense if Labour are only polling a few points higher than they did. It would also mean that they are not getting anyone back who voted Labour from 1997-2005 and gave Cameron his win in 2010. Labour can't win power on the back of dissaffected Lib Dems.

OK, this is the main place where we disagree.  I think that swing is still there, and that indeed it's the case that Labour aren't really making any progress with people who voted Tory in 2010 (and are also suffering from UKIP).  I think that makes sense if you think about what people who voted Tory and Lib Dem respectively in 2010 were looking for.  (In particular, I think Labour actually can win power, at least in the form of a minority administration, on the back of people who voted Lib Dem in 2010.)

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

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I wouldn't take that much notice of the 2009 Euros, which (a) were Euros and (b) were held at pretty much Labour's nadir.  But I do agree that losses to UKIP are a danger for Labour.

[YL]

My personal feelings are:
Vote Share: Con 30%, Lab 30%, UKIP 20%, Lib Dem 10%, Others 10%
Seat Share: Con and Lab both around 300 with Lib Dems winning 0 - 5 seats making a coalition impossible. General Election held in November 2015 or Grand Coalition

0-5 seats for your party?  That makes Dan Hodges look like an optimist.

[YL]

Charlie Kennedy is safe. The only place where people don't make fun of Danny Alexander is in his own seat. He remains a fairly popular MP. The main challengers in his seat are Labour who, in a good year for them in 2010, fell back. The SNP will only rise in that seat if they can tap the Lib Dem vote. They won't here. Might end up a 3 way marginal but I see it as a Lib Dem hold. Viscount Thurso is still lord of all he surveys in Caithness. I wouldn't be surprised if the Lib Dems hold all 3.

The SNP will gain Gordon because Malcolm Bruce is standing down. Menzies is standing down in North East Fife so that seat is up for play. In all honesty there will be a lot of 'churn' in the seat; voters aren't aware who is best placed to win here if they don't like the Lib Dems. The SNP sit 4th, yet won here in 2011 at Holyrood. Glenrothes next door (an SNP stronghold at Holyrood) is out of their grasp (despite Lindsay Roy and his magic Mary Poppins postal vote bag chucking it) so they need to pick what seat to invest in.

I agree that Kennedy is not going to lose; the only way that seat is interesting is if he stands down.  I wouldn't be quite so confident about Alexander and Thurso, though I would agree that Thurso at least is favourite to hold on.  The Highlands Lib Dems took an awful mauling in the 2011 Scottish Parliament election.

I think that if the Lib Dems are in trouble in North East Fife with the loss of Ming Campbell's personal vote, the SNP are the most likely beneficiaries given the Holyrood result, but I could be wrong.  I would make the Lib Dems favourites there.

[YL]

OMG YL, have you seen this

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/26/nick-clegg-and-lib-dems-face-battle-for-survival

I doubt it, but it would make my first general election vote extremely worthwhile if I got to uproot a party leader.

It's a leaked internal poll, and the numbers are crazy, so it deserves a certain amount of scepticism.  I don't find it implausible that Clegg is doing worse than the council candidates, but I don't believe he's on 23%.

[YL]

I wonder if Oakeshott will be kicked out of the party for this? I don't know how much loyalty is enforced in the Lords, but surely this crosses some sort of line...

Oakeshott has resigned from the party.  His parting shot includes two more constituency polls, one in Twickenham showing Cable narrowly behind (Con 34 LD 32 Lab 23 UKIP 5) and one in Inverness et al showing Alexander in a poor third (SNP 32 Lab 25 LD 16 Con 12 UKIP 7).

(Statement here.)

[YL]

Speculation about a possible 2015 gain for the yellows.

I don't see it to be honest.  I'd expect most anti-Unionist voters in South Belfast to stick with McDonnell in an FPTP election, even if many of them might be quite sympathetic to Lo and Alliance.

[YL]

Camborne & Redruth is interesting in that Ashcroft poll.

Re Rotherham, remember that Labour still got more than twice as many votes as UKIP in the November 2012 by-election, in spite of the problems with the council, the Labour selection farce and the circumstances of the by-election.

[YL]

These are the four most marginal LD-Lab seats, all won with smaller than 5% majorities. If Labour were not winning these, something would be seriously wrong with national polling. My guess is that Alexander and Hughes should be safe for the Lib Dems in this category but maybe not Featherstone. Still, thanks to post-97 tactical voting, there aren't that many seats Labour can take from the Lib Dems (maybe 10 on a good day).

It's not that Labour are winning these seats in this poll that is notable, it's the size of the swings.  On those swings, even on the second question Hughes and Mulholland would indeed be in trouble if their seats were to behave the same way.  Two of the seats show 19% swings from Lib Dem to Lab, a size of swing I am very keen on for some reason.

[YL]

I wish Ashcroft polled Labour held Lab-Lib marginals like Sheffield Central. Mainly because I want to see if the Greens have managed to steal chunks of the vote.

Yes, I was hoping to see Sheffield Central polled too, essentially to see just how far the Lib Dems are falling.  The Greens did extremely well in the local elections (over 30% across the constituency and first or second in all five wards).  They're no threat to Paul Blomfield now, but the constituency as presently drawn is not naturally safe for Labour and the Greens might be thinking they could challenge for it in the future.

[YL]

But I cannot imagine, that in duells with the Tories Progressives won't vote tactically.

Presumibly because Labour supporters (and other progressives) doesn't view the LibDems as the least of two evils any longer, but equally bad as the Tories. 

I think some will think that way, while others will continue to hold their noses and vote for the Lib Dem.

For me it would depend on the Lib Dem.  For example, I'd be happy to vote for the sitting MPs in Torbay or St. Ive's, but not in Yeovil or in Taunton Deane; in the latter case I feel a Tory gain might be a shift left.

[YL]

Yes. But the informed observer would have guessed there would be big swingback to Labour in these seats. They are mainly first-time, notional pick-ups for the Lib Dems, in what was their closest-ever election to Labour by a distance. You can categorise Redcar and Burnley in that bracket too, even though they're notionally safer, whereas the big Manchester, Withington swing is more interesting - Labour and the Lib Dems are back to their 2001 figures there. Anyway, this will be very much the tertiary battleground of the election. About a handful of seats are really up for grabs between the two parties. The net beneficiaries of the Lib Dem deflation will be the Tories if, as I think is likely, they end up with 20 to 30 seats.

There are 17 Lib Dem seats which would fall to Labour on a 10% swing with other parties standing still, plus Bristol West just beyond that threshold and perhaps a couple of longer shots.  (See the list in my post on the first page of this thread.)  Now, I don't expect Labour to win all 17 of those, and the SNP might have something to say about some of them, but most of them are worth watching.

[YL]

LD will probably loose only 5-10 to CON and surely 14 to LAB: NorwichS, BradfordE, BrentC, Withington, Burnley, EastDunbartons, Yardley, EdinburghW, Redcar, Hornsey, CardiffC, Cambridge, Bermondsey, BristolW and perhaps LeedsNW. The seats in rural&remote Scotland&Wales are endangered more by SNP&PC.

I basically agree on the LD/Lab battle, but I think the Lib Dems will hold the odd one or two of those seats.  Bermondsey and Yardley, given obvious personal votes, are candidates IMO.  (Can someone explain how the Lib Dems got so strong in Yardley in the first place?  It doesn't have much in common with the Lib Dem strongholds in other major cities.)  I don't know about Leeds NW: the swing needed is very large, and I think Mulholland is reasonably popular, but it's a university seat.

The LD/Con battle is unpredictable; I wouldn't be surprised by the sort of losses you're talking about (and possibly even the odd gain) but nor would I be surprised by much more serious losses as the tactical votes evaporate, as EPG suggests.

[YL]

A team at the University of Southampton are running a forecast model.  Currently it's giving a point estimate of Lab 36.23, Con 35.52, LD 8.22 with error bars of a couple of points either side:
http://sotonpolitics.org/2014/07/17/the-polling-observatory-forecast-3-slow-decline-in-conservative-prospects-but-still-too-close-to-call/

Putting those numbers into Electoral Calculus gives Lab 315 seats, Con 297, LD 11.

There's also the model run by Stephen Fisher (University of Oxford) which is more Tory-friendly: he's currently saying Con 304 Lab 290 LD 29.  His error bars are much wider: http://electionsetc.com/2014/07/18/forecast-update-18-july-2014/

To be honest I'd be cautious about both of these given the unusual nature of this parliament, but there they are.

[YL]

Making certain assumptions about the results in Norn Iron (five Sinn Féin MPs who don't vote at Westminster and three SDLP MPs and one Sylvia Hermon who will probably support Labour) Labour need 319 seats to control the Commons.  With 315 they could try to do confidence and supply deals with Plaid and the SNP and form a minority government.  It would be a surprise for it to last a full parliament, though.

I also don't expect the Lib Dems to go as low as 11 seats, but if they did I think it would be very hard to keep them in office.

[YL]

Ashcroft released another round of constituency polls in the marginals.  They show a small shift from Lab to UKIP since the last time he did this, so they're not quite as good for Labour overall, but still show some comfortable Labour gains in seats narrowly won by the Tories last time.  They also show Thurrock and South Thanet turning purple, for what that's worth.

[YL]

RedEd has disappointed me, for example, by overseeing to rename the outdated label "Labour" into "Progressives" or "Democrats". And with 100% I knew 2010, that the LDs in coalition would be halved, but with 70% I expected its left wing to depart from Liberals&coalition - also a missed chance!

I admit I'm risking projecting my own views onto a larger group, but I don't think David Miliband would have been better at attracting left-wing LDs than Ed.  One of the big reasons Labour was unattractive to such people (not the only one, mind) was foreign policy (Iraq in particular) and it would have been harder for David M to look like a clean break there.

And yes, changing the name was never going to happen.  "Progressives" was actually a name used by anti-Labour parties in local elections in many places (in Sheffield from the early 30s to the early 50s).  "Democrats" just sounds wishy-washy; the LDs actually used it briefly after the 1988 merger and abandoned it fairly quickly.

[YL]

Reading is a classic case of a "sandwich" electoral map, with the core of the town split between two seats which both contain areas outside the town proper.  I'm pretty sure if there were a single Reading seat it would be Labour.  In Reading East the problems with the 1997-2005 MP (who got deselected) may also have affected Labour's recent performance.

The bits of West Berkshire district in Reading West are particularly Tory.  However, the 2007 result in one of the wards, Calcot, suggests that sometimes deed polls may be a good idea for council candidates.

Brian Bedwell (C) 1507
Peter Argyle (C) 1354    
Manohar Gopal (C) 1254    
Edmund Savage (Ind) 531
Glenn Dennis (Lab) 504
Chris Day (LD) 311
Gina Houghton (LD)   282    
Jacob Sanders (Grn) 270
Mark Thatcher (LD) 197

(from Andrew Teale's website)