UK General Election - May 7th 2015

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If the leader of the opposition is not seen as a credible potential prime minister history shows they tend to lose general elections.

Yeah, just ask Thatcher in 1979.

Or Tony Abbot, for that matter.

I still see the point though. Miliband's terrible approval rating could well be a problem for Labour in 2015 - particularly if the Tories succeed in making the election into a "presidential" one, with more focus on the PM candidates than on the parties they lead.

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SD parties just don't change their names, as former Norwegian Labour PM Jens Stoltenberg said when a journalist from Aftenposten (The Evening Post) asked him if the name wasn't outdated and ought to be changed now that only a minority of its voters where workers:

"The Labour Party is called the Labour Party, just as Aftenposten is called Aftenposten, even if its published in the morning".

Though our Labour Party did change its name, as recently as 2011.

(They switched the official name from Det norske Arbeiderparti to Arbeiderpartiet, which is what everyone had been using colloquially for a very long time anyway. So not exactly a dramatic change)

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And still Clegg appears to be safe in his job, with only half a year to go until the general election.

I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't even been a leadership challenge. I realize that choosing a new leader won't solve the Liberal-Democrats' problems - but it's not as if things can get much worse for them, right?

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Good law, IMO (though it should be four years). Prevents the sitting government from having an "unfair" advantage.

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Well yes and no; it can give the incumbent government unfair advantages of a different sort.

I'm sure it can - but in what ways?

I would have thought that the absence of such a law gives the incumbent PM a bigger advantage, as he could then call an election at whatever moment is more favorabe to his chances of victory.

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Should be the greatest/ most interesting British General Election in many years  (yes, I know that is said during every election, but this time the cliché is actually true).

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If the Lib-Dems really do as disasterously as they're polling at the moment, barely 1/3 of their level at the last GE, I would't be surprised if Clegg (or anyone else in the party) lost his seat.

Can't really see them staying this low though - but it would be damn funny.

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Fwiw, in the last poll conducted before Smith's death in May 1994, Labour had a 21 point lead.

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I'm not saying the tories won't win (I'm inclined to think they will) but that graph seems to be the sort of thing, like, for instance, no president being re elected with X% unemployment, that's a rule until it isn't.

Oh yes, but every government since 1983 (even Major in '97) has seen a 'swingback' over the 6 months prior to an election. If this one doesn't it naturally breaks that rule. But it's a very good thing for the Conservatives to be neck and neck with their challengers at this point in the campaign.

Actually, Labour's lead at this point in 2001 and 2005 were bigger than their results in the election.

Also, it should be noted (obvious as it is) that even though the Tories are "neck-and-neck" in polls, that would translate to Labour easily getting more seats, by some margin. For the Tories to get a majority or even a plurality of seats, they need a substantial lead in the popular vote.

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Why are 2001 and 2005 omitted from that graph?

Because it's to do with Conservative governments and Labour was in power then. Labour's 2010 'swingback' is there for reference in red.

Not so.  I've just found the link and the justification for excluding 2001 and 2005 is that the government wasn't trailing.  (Which is pretty dodgy: if you exclude those two for having a government lead there are serious questions about cases like 1997 where there was an enormous opposition lead.)

To make their reasoning even more suspect, didn't the government actually lead at the equivalent point for both the 1983 and 1987 elections as well? Not to be conspiratorial, but it seems pretty obvious why 2001 and 2005 were excluded from this "model".

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Any theories on why the Green Party is polling so well compared to their past GE results (as far as I can see, their best showing was 1,04%, in 2005)?  Do they have any nationally known politicians/spokesmen?

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This will be a total mess. Debates with as many as seven party leaders can work reasonably well if there a two relatively clear blocks standing against each other, as is often the case in the Scandinavian countries, but it should be more unworkable when you have no "alliances" like in the UK. Should be fun, though.

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Or it quickly becomes a game of 6 vs. 1.

And fair enough to the Greens, but why SNP and Plaid? 85% of the country can't even vote for them.

They had separate Scottish, Welsh and NI debates last time. What's wrong with that?

Do you think so? A far greater number of Lib-Dem voters have fled to Labour than to any other party (according to Ashcroft), so I would imagine that Clegg would spend much of his time attacking Miliband. And as for the SNP, most of its targets are Labour MPs.  

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Yes, it is a little curious. Technically he should only be asking the second question.

Not to disparage the Britons, but would the average voter actually know who the parliamentary candidates in their own constituency are (that would certainly not be the case here - though I realize a larger portion will probably know in a FPTP system)? If not, then I would say the 1st question is more useful.

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Survation poll:
CON - 31% (+2% on December poll)
LAB - 30% (-2%)
UKIP - 23% (+3%)
LD - 7% (-4%)
SNP - 5% (+2%)
GRN - 3% (+1%)
OTH - 1% (N/C)

May2015 says with those results:
CON - 283 seats
LAB - 252 seats
SNP - 50 seats
LIB - 25 seats
UKIP - 17 seats
GRN - 1 seat
Others - 4 seats
NI - 18 seats

Depressing.

How can a virtual tie in the popular vote give the Tories a clear plurality of seats? That seems impossible, when considering Labour's recent large advantages in the vote/seats distribution (even when taking a possible Labour disaster in Scotland into account).

As recently as 2005, the Tories received (barely) more votes than Labour in England, yet received only 194 seats there, compared to Labour's 286. I'm probably missing something here, but I really can't understand May2015's model.

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Survation poll:
CON - 31% (+2% on December poll)
LAB - 30% (-2%)
UKIP - 23% (+3%)
LD - 7% (-4%)
SNP - 5% (+2%)
GRN - 3% (+1%)
OTH - 1% (N/C)

May2015 says with those results:
CON - 283 seats
LAB - 252 seats
SNP - 50 seats
LIB - 25 seats
UKIP - 17 seats
GRN - 1 seat
Others - 4 seats
NI - 18 seats

Depressing.

How can a virtual tie in the popular vote give the Tories a clear plurality of seats? That seems impossible, when considering Labour's recent large advantages in the vote/seats distribution (even when taking a possible Labour disaster in Scotland into account).

As recently as 2005, the Tories received (barely) more votes than Labour in England, yet received only 194 seats there, compared to Labour's 286. I'm probably missing something here, but I really can't understand May2015's model.

Anyone have an explanation?

[Lurker]

Survation poll:
CON - 31% (+2% on December poll)
LAB - 30% (-2%)
UKIP - 23% (+3%)
LD - 7% (-4%)
SNP - 5% (+2%)
GRN - 3% (+1%)
OTH - 1% (N/C)

May2015 says with those results:
CON - 283 seats
LAB - 252 seats
SNP - 50 seats
LIB - 25 seats
UKIP - 17 seats
GRN - 1 seat
Others - 4 seats
NI - 18 seats

Depressing.

How can a virtual tie in the popular vote give the Tories a clear plurality of seats? That seems impossible, when considering Labour's recent large advantages in the vote/seats distribution (even when taking a possible Labour disaster in Scotland into account).

As recently as 2005, the Tories received (barely) more votes than Labour in England, yet received only 194 seats there, compared to Labour's 286. I'm probably missing something here, but I really can't understand May2015's model.

I wouldn't necessarily endorse May2015's model, but a Labour disaster in Scotland really does have the potential to make a mess of their advantage from the way votes are distributed.  It'll probably take at most 2 percentage points or so off their UK vote share, but at worst it could cost them nearly 40 seats, which is quite a bit more than a similarly sized uniform national swing.

For comparison electionforecast.co.uk (in its central forecast) currently gives a 283-283 tie between Labour and the Tories with the Tories having a 1.9% popular vote lead, but it only gives the SNP 33 seats, with Labour holding onto 23 in Scotland.

The way the very high UKIP figure (a Survation speciality) is being treated might possibly be hurting Labour too, but I haven't investigated how the model treats UKIP.

Interesting! I do have the feeling though that the May2015 model underestimates Labour's advantage in the votes/seats distribution (based on the last couple of GEs), but who knows. Guess we'll find out on May 7.

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The answer is that seat projections are usually worthless.

This is true, though some projections are more worthless than others. Any model predicting that the Tories can win more seats than Labour on an equal share of the vote is hard to see as even remotely credible.  

In that regards, this one looks pretty terrible as well: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/feb/01/2016-general-election-prediction

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So let's say that the Tories get 33 percent to Labour's 32 percent, but Labour ends up with more seats... Do you think a scenario like that would lead to increased demands for electoral reform within the Tories?

It's happened before, to both parties; it's just an occupational hazard of their electoral system.

In the past few elections though, the system has strongly benefitted Labour, to a degree I don't think had been seen in a very long time. Just compare the Labour and Tory vote shares in 2005 and 2010 respectively, and what those result got them in seats. In '05, the Conservatives got more votes in England, yet received 92 fewer seats there.

That's why I still have trouble accepting the May2015 model as legitimate, even when taking into SNP and UKIP factors into account.

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The LD pulls in the single digits, how many seats would they be expected to lose, and who would pick them up? LD seems to me this odd duck where in some seats, their main competitor is the Tories, and in others, the Tories are near invisible, and the race is with Labor.  It's almost schizophrenic.

On the first point, no one really knows. The LibDems are weirdly optimistic (insisting that their vote will only crash in places where it doesn't matter) but the excessive optimism is in their nature. I note that as recently as 1992 they had just twenty seats and that was with a much higher share of the vote (18%) than currently looks realistic. That isn't a prediction, but a reminder that there's no reason to assume that they will automatically have a large block of MPs.

As for who benefits (perhaps), then it depends where. But it's certainly true that the Tories finished second in most LibDem seats and that many of these seats were reliably Conservative before 1997. Tory hopes of a majority rest (to a considerable extent) on the idea that they can gut their coalition partners while holding their ground elsewhere.

The two steepest drops in the Liberal share occurred in 1979 and 1992 and the Liberals were shielded somewhat from loosing more than 2 seats on each occasion. In 1992 they even achieved swings towards them in many seats that would later fall to them five years later. So if we are looking at 'gentle' decline down to the high teens I would actually expect them to hold on to 2/3rds of what they have. As you say however, they are polling at a two generational low and there's a lot of confidence that we don't know is misplaces or not. There are some places where they seems to be resilient locally, their London suburban seats, Eastleigh, Lewes and fortress Westmoreland for example, so I think their ground game will be good enough to see them overperform UNS.

But are the any reasons to believe that the Lib-Dems could have a result in the high teens (17-19%)? It's only two months from election day, and they are not even averaging half of that result in the polls.

I know that the British polls are of dubious quality (to put it kindly), but even if the Lib-Dem's support is being underestimated, they would need a pretty great campaign to get near such numbers.

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At the moment May2015 is indicating that, with Labour and the Tories both getting 33.3 percent of the votes, the Tories would get 17 seats more (263 to Labour, 280 to Tories). It has previously been said that the constituency boundaries favour Labour, but I guess that doesn't matter so much in the scenario where the SNP wipes Labour out from Scotland, which is what May2015 is currently predicting.

Their forecasting still looks strange in light of earlier results - particularly in comparison with 2005 (when the constituency boundaries in England massively favored Labour, giving them 92 more English seats than the Tories, despite getting fewer votes).

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Cameron says he won't seek a third term if he gets a second, which would mean five years of endless speculation as to who would succeed him.

Why does he announce this now? There seems little to gain by it, and much to lose.