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Projecting the result of the May 2015 general election, UK election 2015 updates, United Kingdom General Election updates, UK political News 2014 2015

Projecting the result of the May 2015 general election

Just how will the political landscape across the UK look after the next general election in May? And what are the chances of the DUP reclaiming East Belfast? Before he even has his Christmas pudding, pollster Bill White can't resist a few new year predictions.

While you're handing out the presents and eating your Christmas dinner on December 25, we political anoraks will be noting that from Christmas Day it will be exactly 19 weeks to the UK general election 2015.

Sad, isn't it, that pollsters think of such trivia! So what we thought we'd do as a way of a Christmas review is take the latest YouGov 2014 UK (ie Great Britain) polls, include our own LucidTalk Northern Ireland (NI) polls, and project the result of the May 7, 2015, UK general election. Thanks to my UK polling colleague Peter Kellner (president, YouGov) for his Great Britain poll projections and data.

Basically, there are three key factors that will affect the outcome of the 2015 UK general election: the in-built advantage that the current electoral boundaries give to Labour, Ukip's performance in England and Wales, and the Scottish National Party (SNP) performance in Scotland.

In terms of the first factor, there is a good chance that Labour will emerge as the largest party next May, even if it trails the Conservatives significantly in votes. For example, if we take the most recent average Britain (not NI) poll scores we have Labour and the Conservatives both on 34%, and with these GB-wide percentage vote shares Labour ends up being 32 seats ahead of the Conservatives.

However, to make our forecast more accurate we have applied two different calculations, one for Scotland, and one for England and Wales, as we believe this provides a more accurate overall UK projection. Plus, we have also included our own projections for Northern Ireland based on LucidTalk's polling during the past 12 months.

One of the key reasons for this approach is that, according to the latest polls, the SNP is currently thrashing Labour in Scotland, with a recent YouGov poll putting the SNP 16 points ahead, and the prediction models show that this will result in 31 seat losses in Scotland for Labour.

The overall effect of this is to reduce Labour's GB-wide total by 20 seats - Labour gains 11 seats if England/Wales is forecast separately. With these numbers Labour remains the largest party, but falls well short of a majority.

So what about Ukip? It has the big momentum at the moment, but is at a disadvantage in terms of winning seats under the one-constituency first-past-the-post election system used at Westminster elections.

src:belfasttelegraph

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