2024 UK general election predictions and general discussion.

[jon81uk]

Ed Davy Zorbing his way round the country

Is that a new Channel 5 show?

 

[Matt N]

In quite a remarkable development, it is alleged that even Rishi Sunak is quietly fearful of losing his own seat, Richmond and Northallerton, and has redirected Tory campaigners there in recent weeks: https://www.theguardian.com/politic...-sunak-fearful-of-losing-his-seat-sources-say

Sunak allegedly said to his inner circle that the vote in Richmond and Northallerton appeared to be “too close to call”…

Most polls say he will retain his seat, but an Electoral Calculus poll for the Telegraph, as well as some of the other more extreme Labour victory polls, forecast him potentially losing it. That would be quite remarkable if it happened; Sunak would be the first ever sitting PM to lose his seat in an election!

With Mel Stride saying on BBC Breakfast that the election is “more about deciding the opposition than deciding the government” and saying that “Labour will win, with likely the biggest majority in political history”, Suella Braverman already saying that “the Tories have failed”, and Rishi Sunak allegedly being privately fearful of losing his own very safe Tory seat, before a single ballot has been cast suggests that even the Tories have given up any hope of a last-minute Tory victory…

 

[Matt N]

Sorry to double post, but we now have the final YouGov MRP poll. This was very accurate last time and in 2017, and it forecasts a historic Labour landslide, with a Labour majority of 212: https://apple.news/A0jOm_PpgTPG_fTaRaZTBZw

This would be the largest majority of any party since 1832. Within YouGov’s margin of error, the majority could range between 132 and 289, and the forecasted seat counts, as well as the anticipated range of potential seats, are as follows:

• Labour: 431 (391-466)
• Conservatives: 102 (78-129)
• Liberal Democrats: 72 (57-87)
• Scottish National Party: 18 (8-34)
• Reform UK: 3 (0-14)
• Plaid Cymru: 3 (1-4)
• Green Party: 2 (1-4)
• Other: 18

In terms of estimated vote share, the parties are as follows:

• Labour: 39%
• Conservatives: 22%
• Reform UK: 15%
• Liberal Democrats: 12%
• Green Party: 7%
• Scottish National Party: 3%
• Plaid Cymru: 1%
• Other: 2%

If this result comes true, it would be truly historic for Labour!

 

[Alsty]

@Tom's hinting that it's only a matter of time before The Sun officially comes out and backs Labour, so that Murdoch can once again claim to have picked the winner of the election

And just like that ...

The Sun backs Labour Party saying it's 'time for change'

The newspaper says the Tories have become "a divided rabble" and need "a period in opposition to unite".

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[rob666]

Well it took them long enough.
I am actually beginning to get electile dysfunction...

 

[BigT]

The Sun is always predictable, like all these hang on so called celebrities, like to be seen to back the winner.
I think tomorrow could shock a few people, I predict the polls are quite a bit out for various reasons.

There is no appetite for Labour, I saw a poll today that said 48% of people were only voting labour just to kick out the tories.

Voter apathy, it’s a done deal right so why turn up and vote? One thing is for sure the old will be out and they will mostly vote Tory.

The polls are always Tory shy, it so unfashionable to say you will vote Tory if someone asks you will say something else.

Reform vote will collapse, they won’t win a single seat.

Put all that together and you still have a Labour win but a lot tighter than some of these polls are predicting.
I could be wrong and maybe the turnout will be high in which case the labour majority will be bigger but even the poll mentioned above has such a huge margin of error we can’t trust them.

 

[Ryan]

The polls are always Tory shy, it so unfashionable to say you will vote Tory if someone asks you will say something else.

People say this a lot.

2019, final week polls suggest CON at 41-45%. Actual result 44%

2017, final week polls suggest CON at 42-46%. Actual result 43.5%

2015, final week polls suggest CON at 31-37%. Actual result 37.8%

2010, final week polls suggest CON at 35-37%. Actual result 36.8%

Not that shy, obviously.

 

[Tom]

Pessimistically believe it will be closer to the lower end for Labour, but praying Tories are knocked into third place by the Lib Dems.

Reasonably confident that Starmer will achieve less support than Corbyn did in 2017. Let the scrutiny begin on day one of what they are actually doing with power.

 

[Matt.GC]

The polls are wrong, of that I'm sure. There is no modern historical precedent for this election, and polling agencies have been saying as such for weeks. 100+ Tory seats really are on a knife edge. It's my belief (based on nothing other than gut instinct) that the polls overstate Reform, underestimate how many Labour voters will stay at home, and how much traditional Tories are easily and irrationally scared of Labour.

We may all see the Tory scare tactics pretending that Starmer is some sort of Maxist as laughable, but hard core Tories believe this stuff. Even though Starmer has basically stood on a stance not too dissimilar to that of David Cameron 14 years ago, there are people out there who genuinely believe this fear nonsense. MRP's are good at modelling demography, but not human unpredictability.

Revised prediction from me, and it hasn't changed a lot in the last couple of weeks.

Labour - 370-400 (much worse than MRP predictions)
Conservative - 120-150 (High end of MRP predictions)
Liberal Democrats - 45-60 (Inline with MRP predictions)
SNP - 18-25 (Higher end of MRP predictions)
Reform UK - 2-4 (Clacton is a shoe in)
Green - 2-4 (Brighton Pavilion a shoe in, Bristol Central likely)
Plaid - 3-4 (Ynis Mon possible gain).

Sinn Fein biggest party in Northern Ireland, DUP possibly down to 2, Corbyn and Galloway retain their seats.

 

[Ryan]

underestimate how many Labour voters will stay at home

This bit interests me the most. I've been really surprised by people hearing "Supermajority" and seeing the Tories terrified and it's really really egged them on to go out and vote Labour. It's kind of dark but I do understand where they are coming from. For lots of people around me at work they've gone from "Labour are gonna win anyways, meh" to "Let's see how high we can make this go"

I think it's difficult to tell exactly how people are going to react tomorrow. But it's exciting nonetheless.

As someone who's really keen on a better electoral system, I actually wouldn't be too upset about a smaller Labour majority that forced them to work alongside other parties to ensure stuff gets through. If we can show the benefit of compromise and middle-grounding, it might bring us closer to binning FPTP...but that's my wishful thinking kicking in I think!

 

[Matt N]

I think Labour winning is very, very likely at this point. Earlier in the campaign, I thought that a 1992-style epic comeback for Sunak might be possible, but unless the opinion polls have been lying on an epic scale or FPTP throws up some epic wildcard that means that the Tories somehow win with only a 20% vote share, then this is very unlikely to happen. Given the stubbornly terrible poll ratings and sheer distance behind Labour, I think any semblance of a Tory win is nigh-on impossible at this point.

The main question is more how much Labour will win by. I still think a hung parliament is a possibility, albeit an increasingly remote one, although at this point, I think a Labour majority is by far the most likely outcome. I'll admit I can't quite bring myself to believe that Labour will do as well as the polls suggest, as I've always felt that Starmer lacks the rabid personal popularity and positive incentive to vote Labour of Blair, but I am cautiously optimistic and certainly open to surprises!

Opinion polls and MRP models have grown a lot more accurate in recent years, so utterances about 1992 and 2015 may be somewhat moot. YouGov's MRP poll was alarmingly accurate in both 2017 and 2019; it predicted Theresa May's loss of majority in 2017, and it was also pretty accurate at predicting Boris' "Red Wall" landslide in 2019. Out of interest @Matt.GC, why do you feel that there has been no historical precedent for this election? Is that not the case for any election to some degree?

I've got to say, though... it would be wild if Starmer managed to get some 400+ seat landslide and make the Lib Dems the official opposition. I can't quite imagine the Tories being wiped out like that, and as much as the left-leaning person in me would find it quite a sight to see, I'm mildly hesitant to say that it would be a good thing for a multitude of reasons...

On a side note, I'm just so used to always being on the losing side of elections and referendums (I rooted for Labour in 2017 and 2019 and lost, and rooted for Remain in the EU referendum and lost), so I'll admit that I'm just excited to (hopefully) finally be on the winning side! Does anyone else get what I mean?

 

[Matt.GC]

@Matt.GC[/USER], why do you feel that there has been no historical precedent for this election? Is that not the case for any election to some degree?

No, it isn't. For the following reasons.

1. The Conservatives have never consistently polled as low as this, not only over the past 3 years, but during the campaign itself. They've polled as low as this before, but it's never stayed like that for such a sustained period of time.

2. A winning party has never won such a large majority on such a small share of the national vote as is being predicted.

3. The pollsters themselves are cautioning that, although they stand by their science, the variability is so large that a tiny swing either way could make a massive difference. There's no other election in my lifetime where so many seats could go either way on the basis of just a few thousand, or in some cases just a few hundred votes.

4. There has never been such a low predicted combined national vote share for both of the biggest parties.

5. Boundary changes. Although boundary changes are nothing new in the grand scheme of things, this is the first 'new world' election being fought where significant boundary changes have taken place. What I mean by the 'new world', I'm talking about elections held since the 2008 Financial Crisis. 2010 was an anti-labour and pro-SNP election. 2015 was an anti-Lib Dem and 'not forgiven Labour yet' election. 2017 and 2019 were about Populism and Brexit. 2024 is an extreme anti-tory election. 2005 was the last election fought on a 'who governs' basis, and I don't think that polling agencies have moved on from that time period in building their models.

That's not to say that tomorrow won't deliver a sizeable Labour majority, because it will. But since 2010, elections in this country have been predominantly about people voting against rather than for something. The Conservatives delivered quite a substantial share of the national vote in 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992, and even in 1997 when they lost. They never dipped below 30%. Bearing in mind they won 2019 with a high national vote share of 43.6%, the largest of any party since 1979, and a large majority of 80, the swing away from them being predicted is completely unprecedented. It's never happend.

However, Labour are now set to win a landslide with a vote share that could be as low as it was in 2005, where they won a majority of 'just' 66, not the treble digit+ majority being spoken of now. Another unprecedented moment.

We are in uncharted waters. I don't believe that pollsters, no matter how clever their MRP models are, have any basis for reliably predicting this result as I don't think they understand the reasons why there's such a dramatic change. To be fair, they're pretty much all saying as such themselves. Bearing in mind their models are made of demographic assumptions based on past behaviour. But I'd argue there is no benchmark. This is why they underestimated fears of Labour by Tory voters in 1992, and how they didn't understand the scale of the Lib Dem collapse and SNP success in 2015.

I've tried to factor that in. I could be completely wrong by this time tomorrow, but I think there's still a lot of old school fear among Tory voters of a Labour government, and many of them will come out tomorrow who previously said they wouldn't, and many others who have talked up Reform will put their X in the Tory box at the last minute. Labour on the other hand are not at all popular, and many core voters will either stay at home (I think the turnout overall will be low) or switch to Green, Lib Dem, SNP, Plaid etc and split the vote because they think Labour will win anyway so they may as well ditch any previous tactical voting allegiances and vote for who they want.

 

[cloudburster]

"Vote my pretties, vote like your life depends on it because it does!"

 

[Poisson]

And if you don't vote, you can't complain. You had your chance.

 

[Rob]

I'm going to be counting votes tonight, so will be missing all the fun as it unfolds from 10pm, which I am a little gutted about!

I reckon a lot of seats are going to be very close to call, so there probably is a fair bit of margin for error in the polls so far. The Reform vote certainly has a part to play, as the votes they take away from the Tories could open the door for Labour (or the Lib Dems in some places) whereby they might not otherwise have had much of a look in.

An exciting 24 hours ahead!

 

[Benzin]

The dream results are:

Lib Dems officially the opposition.
Sunak loses his seat (bonus points if he comes below Count Binface)
Farage fails to become a MP (see also 30p Lee).

Will vote after work. I miss having the polling station practically outside my house.

 

[BarryZola]

Just a small anecdotal section here. Me, my parents and 2 of their friends all voted Tory last time basically because they were the only large party willing to honour the Brexit vote. This time I'm voting Green along with my mom. Dad is voting Labour and the 2 friends are voting Reform. I've always been a floating voter and don't feel tied to any party. Mom n Dad have pretty much always voted Labour and the family friends I'm pretty sure have mostly been Tory.

 

[jon81uk]

At this point its not really an election about who will be the government, that is pretty certain to be Labour.

The interesting result will be who the opposition is, how much they get in by and how many seats Reform get.

I would love to see a Lib Dem opposition, but do think its unlikely.

 

[cloudburster]

As an avid PMQs watcher, I dream of a session not interrupted by hordes of braying, screaming Tory manchildren, so a LibDem opposition would be wonderful. Quite a bit less of the SNP focusing solely on the goings on in a war thousands of miles away would be great too. Less DUP mouthbreathers would be the cherry on the cake!

 

[Slugjc]

Reform will have lost a few votes over the last week. Away from the racism, the manifesto is poor and I think the cult status of farage has dropped, whenever I saw him last week being interviewed he was poor and seems completely unprepared for any question that comes his way. Having said that, I reckon in poorer areas of the country he will do well. I've said before, the constituency I am in the reform candidate hasn't bothered with us but has gone very hard in the town we are attached to, which has a high unemployment rate and an older age demographic