April | 2019 | Elections Etc

By Stephen Fisher.

Updated 23:00 on 1st May to include a poll-based forecast I did not previously have access to, and to clarify figures for the Rallings and Thrasher local by-election model based forecast.

My predictions for this week’s bumper crop of English council elections are given in Table 1 below, along with those of others. The changes are relative to (sometimes notional) results for 2015 when the seats were last fought.

Table 1. Forecasts for English local election net seat changes 2019

	Forecast	Range	R&T (local by-election model)	R&T (local vote intention poll)	Hayward
Con	-700	-90 to -1,300	-405	-1,100	-800
Lab	+590	+200 to +990	+150	+840	+300
LD	+350	-10 to +720	+400	+170	+500

R&T refers to Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher. Their figures are, I’m told, in the hard copy version of their Sunday Times article. (They differ slightly from those on Sophy Ridge on Sunday and others being attributed to them on Twitter.) Their local by-election model takes the results of recent local by-elections to predict the National Equivalent Vote (NEV) and projects the implied NEV changes since 2015 at the ward level (perhaps using notional results where required.) The local-election vote-intention poll Rallings and Thrasher used was conducted by Opinium which had the following shares of the vote: Con 28, Lab 36, LD 10, UKIP 9. That poll-based forecast is also mentioned in this excellent blog on the background to the local elections, which includes great data visualisation.

Continue reading Forecasting Local Election Net Seat Gains/Losses 2019 →

By Stephen Fisher.

Various historical comparisons have been made in discussion of the Brexit process. Last year there was the suggestion that, just as the 2008 financial crisis bailout legislation passed Congress only at the second time of asking after a negative market reaction, so the Meaningful Vote might do so. Not only has Theresa May’s deal failed to pass so far, but there has not been any major market reaction to the three defeats.

Tonight’s statement by the prime minister suggesting cooperation with Labour means she might, as Jacob Rees-Mogg anticipated she might, follow the example of Robert Peel in splitting the Conservative party by pursuing a policy that relies largely on opposition support.

This post explores comparison with the Prohibition of alcohol in the USA. The 18^thamendment of the US Constitution prohibited the, “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” It was approved by big margins in the House and the Senate in 1917, and eventually achieved ratification by the required three-quarters of the states in January 1919. What followed was a dismal story of increasing crime, institutional hypocrisy and disrespect for the law. Public support for prohibition dropped heavily by the early 1920s, and it was repealed in 1933.

Since starting to write this I’ve found that others have said that Brexit is another policy mistake like Prohibition that the public will want to row back from eventually. That might turn out to be true but it is not the analogy I wanted to draw. Regardless of whether you think Brexit is a mistake or not, comparison with Prohibition raises a number of intriguing parallels and questions to ask about the Brexit process.

Continue reading Is Brexit like banning booze? →

Election analysis and forecasting