Latest Forecast - 8th January 2010

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The second of our new style General Election Predictions, focussing on projecting forward to the upcoming national vote, shows dramatic movement in public opinion over the past week. The failed Labour leadership coup has damaged the Government and our forecast has been adjusted to present a much more confident picture for Dave Cameron’s Conservatives.

Summary

There continues to appear to be a ceiling for Labour poll figures suggesting that while recent events and campaigning has hardened the core vote, there is still little sign of Labour retaining the votes of those who left the Conservatives in 1997 and are now seemingly returning to a Cameron led Tory party. The events of the past week have strengthened the Conservatives position. The decline in support for the Liberal Democrats may be partially due to lack of media coverage.

Although we expect the Liberal Democrats to make up some ground from their current position in the high teens in polling, we do not anticipate at the moment them reaching their 2005 level of 22%. This, combined with a resurgent Conservative vote, particularly in the South West, makes a number of their English seats won in 1997 vulnerable to the large swing expected towards the Tories.

Our new style forecast continues to predict that the Greens will pick up Brighton Pavilion as their first Westminster seat, though we are cautious as to the size of majority they will acquire.

In Scotland we predict that the SNP will capture around a quarter of the popular vote, enough to gain them a total of eight seats. The Labour vote however, after collapsing in the first half of 2009, is showing strong signs of recovery, though not quite back to 2005 levels. This means that the predictions of large SNP gains we made a year ago are now no longer likely unless the situation changes north of the border.

We do not as yet have enough detailed information to make specific seat predictions for Wales or Northern Ireland.

We continue to predict that George Galloway’s Respect will win one of the two seats they are contesting in East London.

At present we do not believe that the Speaker, John Bercow, will lose his seat to Nigel Farage.

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