Let’s do some number crunching

With just over five months from the predicted General Election day of 05/05/05 it’s time we started making some forecasts of what we think might happen first in terms of the vote share and secondly the number of Commons seats.

LABOUR VOTES. Our formula is based in the chronic tendency of the pollsters to always over-state Labour. In two of the last three General Election every single poll from every single pollster produced an exaggerated figure. In the other election, 1997, the majority of pollsters did the same. So our formula is to take the average of the bottom two Labour shares in the most recent polls and then DEDUCT 1.5%.

TORY VOTES. If the US automated pollster, Rasmussen, does do UK surveys then we will take their Tory share and make no adjustment. They were the only firm to get it right last time. If not we will take the average of the highest two figures from the latest round of polls and ADD on 1%.

LIB DEM VOTES. The party seems to get about the same or slightly more than the highest polling figure so we’ll take the average of the top two shares from the latest poll round and then ADD on 0.5%.

CONVERTING VOTES TO SEATS. We’ll put the poll shares we’ve determined into the Baxter calculator and then make two adjustments: we’ll take 12 seats from Labour and add them to the LD total because of special targeting. We’ll also take 14 seats from the Labour total and give them to the Tories for “tactical unwind” – a controversial notion but one we believe will happen.

On current figures this produces the following “result”

Lab: 306 (33.5%)
Con: 237 (34.0%)
LD: 72 (23.5%)

The rest is easy – just put your bets on and wait for the money to roll in!

Latest spread prices:- LAB 345-353: CON 200-208: LD 71-75
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