Latest Forecast - 3rd May 2010

This is our penultimate forecast before the General Election proper. We will be providing a full forecast once the final opinion polls have been released, published either on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning.

This forecast assumes a General Election held tomorrow (Tuesday 4th May). For the first time in a fortnight we have the Liberal Democrats predicted to be back in third place, marginally behind Labour. We also predict a higher Conservative vote with levels of support moving towards overall majority territory again.

Unlike other organisations that simply apply a uniform swing to the poll results of the past few days, we have analysed the regional fluctuations, tactical voting possibilities and trends to give a far greater accurate picture of how we think the House of Commons might look if an election was held tomorrow.

Please note – percentage changes have been adapted to reflect 2005 GB results, and not 2005 UK results as previously.

Summary

The Conservatives appear to have momentum moving into the final few days and this progress is reflected in our forecast. If the current pattern continues we anticipate that our final forecast is significantly likely to show a narrow overall majority for David Cameron. However, the next few days’ polls will need to confirm this trend.

Although the Liberal Democrats have fallen significantly in the past 10 days, that decline now appears to have halted. The Labour and Liberal Democrat percentage vote figures are within each others’ margin of error and although we currently forecast Labour to be in second place by less than 0.5%, that position may change by Thursday.

Other Key Predictions

Although the General Election is three days away, we are now in a position to make our first firm predictions for Polling Day

United Kingdom Forecast – Conservatives will be largest party

We are now confidently predicting that the Conservatives will be the largest party in the new Parliament. Although the mainstream media are making forecasts based on Uniform National Swing, it is clear on the ground that the swing in the marginals is of a different order and there is little chance of Labour achieving a plurality.

Scotland Forecast – No SNP breakthrough

It is now clear from the polls and local information that there will be no SNP breakthrough this Election. Although the SNP vote will rise slightly and they may gain a seat or two they will not come anywhere close their target of 20 seats.

• 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 less then 20% of the popular vote, enough to gain one or two seats but no more than that. The Labour vote however, after collapsing in the first half of 2009, is now near 2005 levels. The Conservatives may gain one or two seats north of the border.
• The Plaid Cymru vote in Wales continue to fluctuate around levels where they may win between 4 and 6 seats. In this forecast we tend to a cautious prediction of 4 seats.
• We do not believe that George Galloway’s Respect will win either 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.
• We believe on balance that Richard Taylor will just hold onto his seat in Wyre Forest from the Conservative challenge there.

Full Forecast