Anthony Wells – “Tories need a 7.1% swing to secure a majority”

The founder of UK PollingReport, Anthony Wells, (seen with Guido at last month’s PB.C party), has today published a down-loadable guide to the new parliamentary boundaries.

Anybody tempted to bet on the Tories securing most seats at the General Election should read it because according to Anthony’s study Labour would have won 10 seats fewer at the last election, the Tories 14 seats more and the Lib Dems one seat more. That would still have left Tony Blair with a majority of 42 even though he only got 36.2% of the GB vote.

Under the current boundaries it is estimated that the Tories would need a swing from Labour of 7.4% for David Cameron to be sure of entering Downing Street. The changes reduce that to 7.1%. Even though there has been a significant improvement for the Tories in the polls they are still miles away from reaching this target.

The big challenge for Labour is that it would now take a swing of just 1.5% to the
Tories to rob them of an overall majority so the prospect of a hung parliament is at the moment the most likely outcome.

The biggest reason why the system is still so biased towards Labour is the over-representation of Wales. The target size of English and Scottish seats is 69,93 electors. In Wales it is 55,640 giving the Principality 40 Westminster seats when it should only have 32. As Labour is the dominant party there this gives it a big bonus.

Download the guide and check for yourself. Anthony has done a great job in putting this together and deserves all our thanks.

Mike Smithson