UK General Election - May 7th 2015

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It's still early enough to test a few ideas out, so here's something. Would people here find this kind of thing useful or not?

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It will be quite a stretch for Labour to win Bradford West with a candidate in the field for less than twelve weeks. Are there internal selection disputes?

In that constituency? When haven't there been?

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This cannot be real

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wtf

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So whose support is more likely to collapse between now and May 7: The Greens or UKIP?

Both are potentially vulnerable to that kind of thing (don't confuse that for a forecast). Broadcast regulations and the reality of a competitive race for PM mean that UKIP won't dominate media coverage (which they kind of sort of have done over the past couple of years), even if they have managed to guarantee not being treated as also-rans. Nigel Farage will at least get his five minutes. On the latter point the Greens have not been so lucky.

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None of the British polling firms are really good, it's just that some are terrible.

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"This newspaper" speculates on Ukip in 2020, a topic I must admit had not crossed my mind.

Ah, metropolitan ignorance as a substitute for actual analysis. With uncritical recycling of party talking points and the inevitable appearance of dreadful hack academics peddling spurious theories as facts. And this from The Economist. Journalism is dead.

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Is this the point where I make my usual remarks about the need to be wary of constituency polling?

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As for the Greens, well we've not yet had a General Election where they've polled 'respectable' single digits (yet), so we have to be careful about generalisation. Brighton Pavilion, as previously noted, skews massively left/alternative (as opposed to left/proletarian) and also has a substantial student population: these are ideal conditions for a high Green vote. They have also had (since the 1980s) a (sometimes occasional) local government presence in some affluent but also rather alternative (at least in part) towns, which has rarely translated into votes in General Elections (but may do this time round).

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Balfour was not actually Prime Minister at the time of the election: he and his ministry had resigned to let the Liberals run things as a minority before the elections, because things were different then. The last Liberal Leader to lose his seat in a General Election was Archibald Sinclair in 1945, incidentally.

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Who knows? Respect have (already!) fallen apart in Bradford somewhat (for the usual reasons), but the so-called party is rather less important to Galloway's appeal than the loathsome half-genius himself.

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The rubber ball that is Ashcroft's national poll returns with: Labour 36, Con 32, UKIP 11, Greens 8, LDem 7

Meanwhile Populus (which has changed its methodology *again*) is: Labour 32, Con 32, UKIP 15, LDem 9

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Opinion polling now resembles a prediction informed by a survey rather than a survey.

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Rifkind is to stand down as a result of current newspaper headlines. Majority of 24.5% with a very high Tory floor.

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The current incarnation of Kensington is actually quite a bit less safe than the old Kensington & Chelsea was -- it might well have gone Labour in 1997 had it existed

Though notably safer than the 1974-97 Kensington which would certainly have gone Labour in 1997 (and might have been held in 2005, even). Basically it extends further south.

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It's infinitely more damning than the actual trumped-up 'scandal', yes.

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Historically its been reperesented by very high profile tories though, but who's still looking for a seat this close to the poll?

Oh there are always people out looking for a seat. And there are always late retirements.

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It's odd, but entirely in keeping with the history of this seat. Almost tempted to wonder whether she didn't actually intend to win the selection?

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Another YouGov London poll: Labour 42, Con 34, UKIP 9, LDem 8, Greens 7

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What? Labour polled just shy of 37% in the capital in 2010.

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We've all been there

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...

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Scotland is, however, suffering from a severe case of sinistrisme at present, so I'm not sure if findings of that sort are much use

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And we have another dodgy constituency poll!

South Thanet, courtesy of Survation (oh dear) and funded by UKIP donor Alan Bown: UKIP 39, Labour 28, Con 27, Green 3, LDem 2

Meanwhile tonight's YouGov had UKIP on 13% nationally.

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Callaghan was the leading right-wing candidate (ahead of Jenkins, Healey and Crosland) in 1976 and the voting for the last round against Foot mostly (though not entirely) split down factional lines.

As for 2010, David Miliband lost because he ran a sh!tty and complacent campaign; particularly damaging was his failure to shut up certain unpopular supporters of his (this alienated 'swing voters' like me) and his failure to put pressure on USDAW (which has a large and growing membership and which is solidly on the Right) to campaign for him in the way that the large unions backing his brother had for him.

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The LD pulls in the single digits, how many seats would they be expected to lose, and who would pick them up? LD seems to me this odd duck where in some seats, their main competitor is the Tories, and in others, the Tories are near invisible, and the race is with Labor.  It's almost schizophrenic.

On the first point, no one really knows. The LibDems are weirdly optimistic (insisting that their vote will only crash in places where it doesn't matter) but the excessive optimism is in their nature. I note that as recently as 1992 they had just twenty seats and that was with a much higher share of the vote (18%) than currently looks realistic. That isn't a prediction, but a reminder that there's no reason to assume that they will automatically have a large block of MPs.

As for who benefits (perhaps), then it depends where. But it's certainly true that the Tories finished second in most LibDem seats and that many of these seats were reliably Conservative before 1997. Tory hopes of a majority rest (to a considerable extent) on the idea that they can gut their coalition partners while holding their ground elsewhere.