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Category: General Election

The piece in the GE2015 jigsaw that even Lynton Crosby is unable to fix: LAB gets more seats than CON for the same vote share

The piece in the GE2015 jigsaw that even Lynton Crosby is unable to fix: LAB gets more seats than CON for the same vote share

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What happens when you put CON 35% and LAB 35% into the Electoral Calculus seat calculator http://t.co/qP4NIfGVIM — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) January 21, 2014 The challenge for the Tories is even bigger than the projection Everybody who follows UK politics knows that Labour can secure more seats on a given national vote share than the Tories or other parties. The above shows what happens on Martin Baxter’s Electoral Calculus seat porjector when vote shares of CON 35/LAB 35/LD 12/UKIP 10…

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Not a bad set of weekend polls for Labour but doubts fuelled by the leader ratings remain

Not a bad set of weekend polls for Labour but doubts fuelled by the leader ratings remain

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But YouGov’s 8% for the LDs signals problems over Rennard Very irritatingly Opinium don’t publish their full dataset until after the weekend so we have yet to see the firm’s fortnightly leader approval ratings and a Euro election poll that they carried out. Almost all the other firms, bar ICM, now have near instantaneous publication of the detailed data as soon as headline numbers are released. Opinium should get their act together. They are the only firm to carry out…

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MEMO to CON MPs who think that an EU referendum is the magic bullet that’ll help them save seats: It isn’t

MEMO to CON MPs who think that an EU referendum is the magic bullet that’ll help them save seats: It isn’t

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Check this YouGov polling – Europe has little salience Quite simply there are too few potential converts Judging by the intensity of many backbench CON MPs over the EU referendum issue you’d have thought that they firmly believe if only they could get this sorted it would be the magic bullet that would ensure their re-election at GE2015. The blunt fact is that it isn’t. For the vast bulk of voters Europe, even those saying UKIP as the chart shows,…

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The LDs and LAB the gainers in today’s FOUR new voting intention polls

The LDs and LAB the gainers in today’s FOUR new voting intention polls

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It feels like general election time! I can’t remember a day since the 2010 general election when we’ve had four new Westminster voting intention polls. They are featured in the interactive chart above. Most important is the monthly Ipsos-MORI phone poll which only in October had the Tories and LAB level pegging on 35%. Well it’s very different today with the red team having a 9% lead and the LDs seeing their share jump 4. The big driver of the…

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Why those wanting an EU referendum shouldn’t pin their hopes on Ed Miliband

Why those wanting an EU referendum shouldn’t pin their hopes on Ed Miliband

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@LordAshcroft There's no benefit to LAB in helping close down the issue of Europe which has been so divisive for the Tories. No referendum. — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) January 16, 2014 @MSmithsonPB ..wouldn't bet on that… — Lord Ashcroft (@LordAshcroft) January 16, 2014 Last night I got into a little Twitter discussion with Lord Ashcroft over Labour and an EU referendum. He was articulating what is a widespread Tory view that EdM will be forced ahead of the election to…

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The polling differential in the marginals that would mean that we should be adding 5 to the LAB lead

The polling differential in the marginals that would mean that we should be adding 5 to the LAB lead

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Are the blues really doing so much worse in the battlegrounds? Back in September Lord Ashcrooft published his 12,083 sample phone polls showing that LAB was doing substantiality better in the key battlegrounds than in the country as a whole. The idea that something different was happening in the marginals was given greater credence last month when Survation, in its series of constituency polls for UKIP donor, Alan Bown, also had Labour doing better. The broad scale of the swing…

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If LAB find they need to go into coalition then it’s highly likely that they’ll have come 2nd on votes

If LAB find they need to go into coalition then it’s highly likely that they’ll have come 2nd on votes

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Electoral Calculus on CON 36/LAB 34/LD 12/UKIP 10 http://t.co/mTRqtqLs5N pic.twitter.com/pinH57OuDx — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) January 14, 2014 How Ed can be the seat winner but vote loser Lots of talk at the moment about another hung parliament fueled partly by the hitherto unlikely “revelation” from Ed Balls that he’s respected all along the LD decision in May 2010 to go into coalition with the Tories. One thing that hasn’t been focused on is what sort of result would lead to…

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The voting experience from GE2010 that perhaps explains why LAB is doing better in the marginals

The voting experience from GE2010 that perhaps explains why LAB is doing better in the marginals

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LAB voters more likely to turn out where it matters We’ve said it many times before but it is worth saying again. To maximise a party’s votes:seats ratio the best thing you can do is perform differently in different sorts of seats. Just look at the LAB vote GE2010 vote share changes in the chart above. There’s a variation of nearly 6% between the seats where it best performed compared with the worst. The categories are worked out by the…

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