UK General Election - May 7th 2015 (The Official Campaign Thread)

[Lurker]

If these are accurate...

They aren't. Polling companies are not good at demographic fine detail* and the ABCDE system is notoriously poor as a measurement of class (or any other social division for that matter). The Tories had some strikingly good results in some middle class areas in 2010 (particularly in the Home Counties) and also some rather unimpressive ones in some other places.

_{*And have only got worse since they started to mess around with sample data to get the 'right' results.}

Accurate or not, it would not surprise me if class based voting in Britain is declining. It certainly has in the US. I mean, after all, both Labor and the Dems focus most of their efforts on appealing to the middle class, no?  Marx is dead.

Actually, class-based voting was never as prevalent in Britain as one might have expected in such a society (though I guess there were significant regional variations). It never reached the same extent as class-based voting in the Scandinavian countries during the 50s and 60s, for instance (according to Stein Rokkan, who specialised in comparative politics). I don't remember the reasons for this, though.

Of course, this doesn't say much about the situation today, though.

[Lurker]

So, a generation  = two years, or so, in Scotland.

[Lurker]

Here's my forecast using the average of the polls in the first week



Conservatives 273
Labour 302
Liberal Democrats 38
Scottish Nationalists 15
Plaid Cymru 2
Greens 1
Speaker 1

I will be forecasting Northern Ireland once nominations close today

You really should change your methodology as far as Scotland is concerned. Most prediction models have the SNP getting three times as many MPs. If they only win 15 seats it would be one of the worst polling failures in history.

[Lurker]

The long-expected Tory surge doesn't seem to happen.

Their only (unlikely) hope for gaining a majority is another verion of 1992's "Shy Tory factor".

I'm not sure why the bookies still have them as favorites to win the most seats - would have thought it to be 50/50 at best. Any explanations for this?

[Lurker]

Yes, I am somewhat surprised at just how (relatively) stable and consistent the polls are, rather than the opposite.

[Lurker]

bar for the SP I think Labour is the leftiest of the European large centre-left parties. anyway green voters would be unimportant if Labour could tear the left side of the LD back in

What is the SP?

[Lurker]

TNS poll for Scotland. Fieldwork ended over a week ago however;


SNP 54% (+2)
Lab 22% (-2)
Con 13%,
Lib 6%
Green 2% (-1)
UKIP 2% (+1)

Yikes. If this is the actual results in the General Election, are there any Scottish seats that likely won't fall to the SNP?

[Lurker]

Fwiw, May2015 now estimates that the SNP will win 56 of the 59 Scottish seats.

[Lurker]

@YouGov: Final YouGov Nowcast: Con 276, Lab 276, Lib Dem 23, UKIP 1, SNP 51

The outcome that allows the SNP to force another election at any time of their choosing, assuming that the Tories go along with it. Not good.

It's needs a 2/3s majority to dissolve Parliament now - under the Fixed Terms Parliament Act.

That's option 1. I was thinking of option 2, which does not require a two thirds vote (copy and pasted from the BBC site):

The Fixed-Term Parliament Act - passed by the Lib Dems and Conservatives to make their coalition less likely to collapse - has set the date of the next election in May 2020.
An election can only be held before that date if:

1. Two-thirds of MPs vote for it. In practice, that would mean it would need to be supported by both Labour and the Conservatives

2. A motion of "no confidence" in the government is passed by a simple majority of MPs. An election must then be called within 14 days unless a new government can win a confidence vote before that period is up

Can the Fixed Terms Parliament act be repealed with a simple majority?