A few people have asked me this question about my forecast. The trends are definitely there as you can see from the graphs below. But since they are well within the very broad prediction intervals, there is a danger of reading too much into them. Certainly we are far from having enough information to say the model isn’t working well for this electoral cycle. Continue reading Why is the 2015 general election forecast trending?
Forecast update: 4 July 2014
What do the 2014 European and local election results mean for the opinion polls and next year’s general election?
Labour emerged narrowly ahead of the Conservatives in both the local and European Parliament elections. I discussed the implications of the local election results in a previous post on Friday. The results of the Euros only came through last night. This post considers the lessons learnt from both elections for the general election, including the likely accuracy of the opinion polls. Continue reading What do the 2014 European and local election results mean for the opinion polls and next year’s general election?
Unraveling the 2014 local election changes in the share of the vote: who suffered most from UKIP?
A naïve glance at the overall changes in the share of the vote since 2010 in the graph below suggests that UKIP’s big gains came as the expense of the biggest losers, the Liberal Democrats. Continue reading Unraveling the 2014 local election changes in the share of the vote: who suffered most from UKIP?
What do the 2014 local election results mean for next year’s general election?
The Labour lead of 2 percentage points in the BBC’s projected national share of the local election vote (PNS) is too narrow a lead for Labour to suggest they will be ahead in a general election next year. Continue reading What do the 2014 local election results mean for next year’s general election?
BBC Projected National Share of Vote 2014
The BBC Projected National Share of the vote just announced is Con 29, Lab 31, LD 13, UKIP 17, Others 10.
The PNS is an attempt to estimate what the share of the vote would be if the whole of GB had local elections and if the three main Westminster parties had fielded candidates in all wards, as they do in general elections. For more details see here and here. Continue reading BBC Projected National Share of Vote 2014
Locals seats forecast from national polls 2014
Last year I published details of a basic model for forecasting the number of local council seats won from national opinion polls here. The basic idea is to estimate change in seats since the last time they were fought (four years ago) as a function of change in the polls over that time. Continue reading Locals seats forecast from national polls 2014
Reasons for changing the forecasting model: a response to The Economist
The Economist magazine have published a great article on the difficulties of predicting the next election. It makes lots of good points well and kindly covers my 2015 general election forecasting model. But I was bemused by the line that reads, “Within months he had published a revised model: polls had not adhered to the original one.” Continue reading Reasons for changing the forecasting model: a response to The Economist
How the 2015 general election forecast probabilities have changed thus far and why
The graph below shows how my 2015 general election forecast probabilities have changed since October last year.* The blue line shows the probability that the Conservatives will have the largest number of seats. The corresponding red line for Labour is just the mirror image. Also included in the graph is the probability of a hung parliament. Continue reading How the 2015 general election forecast probabilities have changed thus far and why
A long range forecast for the UKIP share of the vote at the 2015 general election
Previous posts at this blog introduce my long-range general election forecasting model, which is updated on Fridays here.
Thus far I haven’t published a forecast of the UKIP share of vote because the party hasn’t been competing in general elections for long enough to build a proper statistical regression model of the relationship between their support in the polls and their votes at elections, as for the three main parties. Continue reading A long range forecast for the UKIP share of the vote at the 2015 general election
Elections Etc 