Who will win the UK general election?
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Version 0 of 1. This election is set to be the most uncertain in a generation. What we can be sure of is that no single party will win an outright majority. David Cameron is unlikely to have the numbers to remain in Downing Street, despite the fact that the Conservatives are likely to win the most votes, and may even win more seats than Labour. In fact a third party, the Lib Dems, has a higher probability of being part of a government than either Labour or the Conservatives. This will be Britain’s first multi-party election: the past won’t be a useful guide to predict the future. On the other hand, there have been more polls carried out in this election than ever before, and more companies polling than at any previous election. And, largely thanks to the largesse of Lord Ashcroft, there are an unprecedented number of constituency-level polls available. So, here are some predictions: 1. The Tories will win the most votes Over the final weeks of the campaign, support for the Conservative party has edged upwards. But support for Miliband has remained firm, in the fashion of an 8ft block of stone. In the Guardian’s average of polls, David Cameron’s party is on 34%, Labour on 33.5%, the Lib Dems on 9%, Ukip on 12.5% and the Greens are on 5%. Nick Clegg may have had a difficult five years (in polling terms) but support for the Lib Dems has crept forward in the closing stages of the campaign, albeit from a low base. Support for Ukip, although down on its January highs of 15%, has proven resilient. While the Greens appear to have surged early as they’ve moved in the wrong direction. If these share-of-the-vote figures were confirmed on Friday, it would mean the Tories would be down two points from 2010 and their coalition partners, the Lib Dems, down 14 points. Meanwhile Labour would see its vote share increase by 4.5 points. In Scotland, we expect the SNP to win 48% of the vote, Labour 26.5%, the Tories 15%, the Lib Dems 6% and both Ukip and the Greens to take 2%. This would indicate a swing of about 20 points across Scotland from Labour to the SNP. In 2010, Labour got 42%, the SNP 20%, the Lib Dems 19% and the Conservatives 16.5%. 2. The race for who leads the largest party at Westminster is too close to call The Guardian’s projection of polls, which is based on a weighted average of all constituency level polls, national surveys and polling in the regions, sees both the Conservatives and Labour winning 273 seats, the SNP 52 and the Lib Dems 27. Of the smaller parties, the Unionist DUP are projected to take nine, while both Ukip and Plaid Cymru are forecast to hold three seats. The Greens are expected to keep the one they currently hold in Brighton Pavilion. The range of projections also demonstrates how close the Westminster battle is. Projections for the parties ranges from 246 to 300. A large part of Labour’s chances will depend on how many seats the party loses in Scotland. If Labour can hold on to 10 seats, and not the expected four, then its chances of being the largest in Westminster dramatically improve. The Conservative path to remaining the largest party will depend on limiting their losses to Labour across the country – and who between the two main parties captures the most seats from the Lib Dems. 3. David Cameron is unlikely to have the votes in Parliament to remain prime minister To continue in office, the prime minister would need to “command the confidence of parliament,” which means that more MPs would need to support a Conservative-led government than be against one. Based on these numbers, he is unlikely to – and on the argument advanced by former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell on Wednesday he would be expected to resign fairly quickly. This is because the sum of those parties that have said they would vote down a Conservative government – Labour, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Greens – adds up to 332 seats. Based on the current projections, tallying up all the sources of support that Cameron could rely on gives him 312 seats – 11 short of a parliamentary majority. Those 11 seats may seem like a small margin. However the only way tomorrow’s result could see this deficit overturned to Cameron’s favour is if his bloc wins seats from the Miliband bloc – any exchange of seats between the Tories and the Lib Dems would make no difference whatsoever to the overall arithmetic. To do that, the Conservatives would have to hit 290 seats or more, leaving Labour on 260. The polls suggest that is very unlikely. However, there are three factors of uncertainty within the polls. There has been a divergence between phone and online polling throughout the campaign. Cameron’s party typically leads in phone polling, with the two main parties in a deadlock according to internet-based surveys. A three-point Conservative lead – a typical figure for phone polling – and a tie reported by internet pollsters would lead to rather different election outcomes. That gives Cameron a glimmer of hope. Assuming the divergence carries through to the final polls, one group of pollsters will be more accurate than the other. Labour, meanwhile, can hope for an upside in Scotland. Be it phone polls or internet surveys, polling in Scotland has been consistent for months: the SNP is on course for a landslide and will win most of the nation’s 59 seats. However, a lower turnout than that implied in polls could mean than in some of the closest constituency contests, Labour (or some Lib Dems) could cling on. Finally, there is the question of the distribution of the Ukip and Green vote. How the share of the Ukip and Green vote is distributed across the country could have a significant impact in key marginal Tory-Labour seats. National polling isn’t very helpful in determining how these votes will look in the constituencies, and constituency polling provides a limited snapshot in a select number of places. The truth is that there simply isn’t enough data to know how the voters of smaller parties will behave across the country – and in tight races even 1-2% of votes taken from Labour (by the Greens) or the Tories (by Ukip) could alter the outcome. That only leaves one final point to make, which is familiar to all psephologists. Call it the Karl Rove caveat; the Republican’s conclusion when faced with clear evidence that Barack Obama had won the 2012 presidential election. The polls could be wrong. |