UK GENERAL ELECTION 2015: UK-Elect General Election Forecast, April 15th 2015.

Wednesday, 15 April 2015

UK-Elect General Election Forecast, April 15th 2015.

Hung Parliament - Labour Lead By 10 But Short By 46. SNP Forecast To Win 50 Of The 59 Scottish MPs.

In the latest, detailed (top 3 parties in every constituency) UK-Elect forecast Labour are predicted to form the largest party by ten seats, and the Scottish National Party is once more forecast to have the key role in deciding who will form the next UK government. Overall, the figure of 329 seats, the combined total for Labour + SNP MPs in this prediction, is enough for an overall majority if the two parties can come to an agreement.

This is the fourth forecast made using the new, improved, UK-Elect v9.4 method which takes account of even more factors than previously. Among the inputs taken into consideration by this forecast were: national opinion polls, regional opinion polls (for Scotland, Wales and London), the exact candidates standing in each seat and whether they were the incumbent, and if so, whether they won that seat for the first time at the previous election, by-elections, constituency opinion polls by Lord Ashcroft and others (adjusted according to how many days ago the fieldwork was done), and the change in the regional and national polls since the poll fieldwork or by-election.

The UK-Elect "adjust target percentages for date" option was also set for this forecast, adjusting the percentages to represent what we currently expect to happen on May 7th, rather than just using the current poll percentages as a target. This option has the affect of adjusting the input opinion poll percentages to take account of what happened in many past elections as the date of the election approached - i.e. that the support levels for the parties returned part-way towards their previous totals. In current circumstances this favours the Liberal Democrats slightly and disadvantages UKIP and the SNP.

The GB percentages input for this forecast were Con 34%, Lab 34%, UKIP 13%, Lib Dem 8.5%, Green 5%. For Scotland the percentages used were SNP 46.5%, Lab 26.5%, Con 16.5%, Lib Dem 4%, UKIP 4%, Green 3%, for Wales the percentages used were Lab 40% Con 26%, UKIP 13%, Plaid Cymru 11%, Lib Dem 5%, Green 4%, and for London the percentages used were Lab 44%, Con 34%, UKIP 8%, Lib Dem 8%, Green 5% Other parties votes were not specifically set. Note that the final forecast percentages differ from the input percentages due to the methodology used (including adjusting for the number of days until the election) - e.g. the final UK target percentages used were Con 34.1%, Lab 33.8%, UKIP 12.6%, LD 9.1%, Green 4.8%.