UK General Election, June 8th 2017

[Former President tack50]

Ok, decided to look at what would happen if the results in each region were equal to the results of the last regional vote. So for Scotland and Wales the Assembly elections of 2016, for NI the 2017 one and since England does not have a regional assembly I used the local elections of 2017 for the entire UK (couldn't find England only popular vote results). Anyways the results would be:

Con 324
Lab 223
Lib 26

SNP 53
PC 4
Green 1
UKIP 0

DUP 10
Sinn Fein 5
SDLP 2
UUP 0

Conservatives short by 2

Other than the Lib Dems being way too high it doesn't look that bad. Give the Lib dems 15 less seats or so (mostly towards the conservatives) and it's a pretty good prediction

[Former President tack50]

Let's say the Tories lose just barely (by 10-20 seats, for example).  If they agreed to form a coalition, who would they form it with?  

I would assume the Lib Dems learned from their 2015 slandering and won't side with the Tories, so would that leave Northern Irish parties like DUP and UUP?

If that's the case then there are four options IMO:

A: If Con+Unionists+abstaining Sinn Fein MPs have a majority, there will be an extremely unstable Tory minority government

B: If the Lib Dems haven't learned from 2015, they'll support a Conservative government alongside the unionists. Not likely since Lib Dems and Conservatives are polar opposites in Brexit

C: If all else fails, there's the option of a full "Coalition of Chaos" (Labour+SNP+Plaid+Lib Dems+SDLP+abstaining Sinn Fein MPs).

D (most likely): A minority Tory government and shortly after it is formed there's a snap election (ie the Spanish scenario. No conclusive majorities so a second election is needed).

[Former President tack50]

there's no legal framework to delay the election though - and like you say, something similar (actually something that probably got a much shocked reaction than this, which is a sad indictment on how used we are to these things) didn't delay an election in the past so delaying this one would be setting a precedent that I honestly would rather that we didn't set - the only reason to start delaying elections in my eyes should be something along the lines of a World War; I don't see why we should let terrorists start influencing when we hold our elections...

Yeah, I agree, a terrorist attack is not enough to cancel an election. Elections should only be cancelled in case of war, a coup d'etat, significant revolts that make going to the polls impossible (and that warrant an emergency state if Britain has those) and the like.

As someone said above the election was not cancelled in October 1974 after an IRA bombing. (and I guess there were more IRA bombings during the campaigns back in the day) Another example is the 2004 Madrid attacks (3 days before the election, election was not cancelled). Those were also larger than the recient ones in Britain in terms of dead and wounded people.

Not to mention, how would the election be cancelled in the first place? Iirc parliament is dissolved so there's no one to pass a bill prolonging that parliament's life. I guess the queen or the prime minister could use some of their emergency powers but I'm not sure exactly how.

[Former President tack50]

Given the sort of election this is the swing matters more than the lead. And the implied swings from the latest poll of each outfit are as follows...

Survation +3.0
YouGov +1.5
Norstat +1.5
Ipsos/MORI +1.0
Opinium +0.5
SurveyMonkey +0.5
Panelbase -0.5
ORB -1.0
Kantar -1.5
ICM -2.0
ComRes -2.5

If you do the average there's a 0.05% swing towards Labour. So, barely anything changes compared to 2015?

[Former President tack50]

I don't think a hung parliament is particularly likely. From everything I've read, seen and heard about the details of polls combined with various reports of candidates and canvassers reporting that they are not seeing the 'Corbyn surge' I think the polls are massively exaggerating growth in support for Corbyn.

The overall impression I get is that Corbyn is surging with some sections of the electorate (particularly students) and that these are, in their enthusiasm, getting greatly over represented in online polls and responders to the (few remaining) phone polls. However these will be more likely to be registered to vote in University towns or in the South, either in London or the commuter belt of the South East. Many reports that both feedback on the doorstep (and to a degree polling subsamples) are showing Labour doing far far less well in towns across the Midlands and North which had lots of Leave voters in 2016. In those places I suspect Labour will go backwards.

The big problem for Labour is that in inner London and most of the major University towns Labour already hold big majorities in most of their seats whilst in the South East commuter belt the Tories are far ahead of Labour in almost all the seats with Labour many times in third place. Pilling up extra votes in these places will gain very little extra seats. In middle sized 'leave' towns across the midlands and the North Labour are much more vulnerable to Tory advances and I expect we'll see big Tory gains in those places tomorrow.

That's my best guess, we'll see who is right tomorrow.

Any chance of Labour winning the popular vote but the tories getting an outright majority? (or even just being the largest party) I think that has already happened before but it's a lot rarer in the UK than in the US