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With new polling figures in, the general election prediction model we covered in November and December has churned out a new prediction for the next general election – and it’s a striking one:
New prediction: Conservative lead of 6% but Labour largest party with 299 seats (27 short of an overall majority)
December prediction: Conservative lead of 9% with 315 seats (11 short of an overall majority)
November prediction: Conservative lead of 10% with 322 seats (4 short of an overall majority)
The academic team who have compiled the prediction say,
The race remains too close to call under reasonable scenarios, either favorable to the government or the opposition. The election of a hung Parliament cannot be discarded at this point. Background to prediction
In November Lib Dem Voice published the first of our exclusive general election predictions, based on the work of a group of academics who have analysed polling data (not just party support levels) in the run up to previous British elections:
Welcome to the concluding part of a two-part series about the real impact social media (or social networking) is having on politics in Britain. Last week I looked at the groups which face extinction; today it’s why pundits searching for the impact of social media on politics in 2010 are looking in the wrong place.
For the third general election in a row, people are lining up to debate whether or not this one will be the internet election; the …
Stephen Tall looks at the prospects for the Lib Dems in the forthcoming general election … (Image: Alex Folkes/Fishnik Photography) A missed opportunity. That was the consensus, inside and outside the Liberal Democrats, on the party’s general election results in 2005. The disappointment was the greater as realisation dawned that the unique set of circumstances of that election – an unpopular government and an even more unpopular opposition – might never again be repeated. What could have been the …
By Mark Pack | Published 8th February 2010 - 12:20 pm
You may have been following some of my travails trying to get repairs made to some of those telephone, broadband, traffic light etc boxes which appear on many pavements.
Although my own local council (Islington) is very good at dealing with them either directly themselves or passing on to the relevant company and ensuring the work is done, other councils, including Haringey and Westminster, are far less so.
Haringey in theory also gets the job done if a member of the public reports a problem to them, but in practice I’ve often found problems of things going wrong or being forgotten.
By Stephen Tall | Published 8th February 2010 - 11:25 am
As the Financial Times notes of the battle to win the Lib Dem / Tory marginal of Eastleigh:
The Hampshire railway town is 11th on Mr Cameron’s target list; the Liberal Democrats’ majority of a little more than 500 should be easily within reach.
But is it really?
… the Tories are by no means certain to win Eastleigh. Lib Dem strategists believe Chris Huhne, the sitting MP, will easily hold the seat – a view privately shared by some Conservatives. …
Eastleigh is the kind of seat that defies the traditional “swingometer”. Like many Lib Dem MPs, Mr Huhne has dug
Really, really, REALLY tired of every time a Lib Dem has any airtime, the only thing the interviewer keeps asking is what the party would do in the event of a hung parliament.
By Mark Pack | Published 8th February 2010 - 9:20 am
With new polling figures in, the general election prediction model we covered in November and December has churned out a new prediction for the next general election – and it’s a striking one:
New prediction: Conservative lead of 6% but Labour largest party with 299 seats (27 short of an overall majority)
December prediction: Conservative lead of 9% with 315 seats (11 short of an overall majority)
November prediction: Conservative lead of 10% with 322 seats (4 short of an overall majority)
The academic team who have compiled the prediction say,
The race remains too close to call under reasonable scenarios, either favorable to the government or the opposition. The election of a hung Parliament cannot be discarded at this point.
Background to prediction
In November Lib Dem Voice published the first of our exclusive general election predictions, based on the work of a group of academics who have analysed polling data (not just party support levels) in the run up to previous British elections:
By Stephen Tall | Published 8th February 2010 - 6:24 am
After a bit of a hiatus, the new LDV members’ survey is now live. So if you are a registered member of the Liberal Democrat Voice forum – and any paid-up party member is welcome to join – then you now have the opportunity to make your views known on a range of issues in our February members’ survey. Topics we are asking your opinion on include:
- whether you think the end of the recession will benefit Labour;
- will the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war be a ‘whitewash’;
- John Terry’s sacking as England captain;
- what the Lib Dems …
By Stephen Tall | Published 7th February 2010 - 7:25 pm
Welcome to the 155th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (31st January – 6th February 2010), together with a hand-picked quintet, usually courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget, by the way, you can now sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox – just click here – ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
A hung parliament might frighten the markets, but according to Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, the concerns are “completely and totally irrational”.
The Lib Dems point out that many of the world’s leading economies, including Germany and Italy, hold elections that almost always produce results where the leading party has to do deals with smaller parties. They add that some countries with single party governments, such as Greece, have some of the worst records in dealing with fiscal crises, while multiparty coalitions, such as the one in Sweden in the 1990s, conducted fierce
By Mark Pack | Published 7th February 2010 - 5:50 pm
It’s been a while since we last reminded readers about this, so now seems a good time to publish the information again. You may have noticed that next to some people’s comments is a small picture of themselves, such as:
If you want a picture to appear next to your comments you need to do two things.
BBC reports Tory shadow home secretary Chris Grayling gets into trouble for using misleading crime statistics. Sara Bedford covered the story for LDV here).
By Iain Roberts | Published 7th February 2010 - 3:34 pm
Here’s the plan. We take a bunch of teenage lads. We pay them tens of thousands of pounds a week, tell them how wonderful they are and have 40,000 fans chant their names at football matches each week.
We eagerly follow their testosterone and cash-fuelled antics as they do the sorts of things lads in their late teens and twenties across the country do: get drunk, cop off and all the rest of it.
We happily encourage young women to see them as a meal ticket that’ll at the very least show the ladies a good time and …
By Stephen Tall | Published 7th February 2010 - 2:15 pm
Yesterday, Pollwatch looked at the state of the parties in January; today it’s the turn of the party leaders. As with all polls, what follows comes with caveats. Only three polling companies – YouGov, Mori and Angus RS – regularly ask questions specifically to find out the public’s views of the three main party leaders. And each asks variants on the basic question – do you think Clegg/Brown/Cameron are doing a good job – to come up with their figures, so comparison ain’t easy. But, still, we don’t indulge in polls often, so here goes …
By Iain Roberts | Published 7th February 2010 - 11:37 am
Whilst crime in London fell between 1870 and 1910, the story north of the border wasn’t quite as rosy.
As the Daily Express reported at the turn of the century:
“The most notable fact of the statistics for 1899 is the immense increase of the criminal work of the country”. Thus opened the report on Scotland’s prisons and court for the past year, which was an unenviable record.
No fewer than 176,524 persons were apprehended or cited, a figure which has never before been reached by 10,000. Drunks and disorderlies alone totalled 112,033.
South Queensferry holds the proud position for 1899 of
By Mark Pack | Published 7th February 2010 - 10:20 am
As I wrote previously about the voting down in the summer of 2008 of plans to reform MPs’ expenses:
The bulk of the blame for blocking the reforms must lie with the Labour Party as 146 of their MPs voted to block the reforms but given David Cameron’s strident recent comments, it’s striking to see that seven of his frontbenchers, and 21 MPs in total, voted to block reform when they had the chance. This was enough to see the measure defeated.
A year and a half on from those 21 voting against changing the expense rules, what do we now know …
By Mark Pack | Published 6th February 2010 - 7:06 pm
The appointment of Tess Culnane, an ex-National Front candidate, to work for the BNP GLA member Richard Barnbrook has been well covered elsewhere.
But one detail intrigues me. As I understand it, Tess Culnane’s job is one that comes with a salary. So does that mean she’ll now start paying off some of the tens of thousands of pounds she owes to two Liberal Democrat members the Liberal Democrats?
The debt comes from her loss of a libel action taken against Lewisham Liberal Democrats Mark Morris (who now works at City Hall too) and Vijay Naidu. As a result of losing the case …
That’s not the only bad news for the Conservatives though. In Aberconwy the local Conservative president (and councillor) Dennis Tew has also quit the party, switching to Plaid. Meanwhile in Southend, Jason Luty’s switch to Independent removes the Conservative Party’s overall majority on the council.
By Mark Pack | Published 6th February 2010 - 5:43 pm
Start with this pair of sentences:
Policing isn’t about communicating with people. It’s about communicating with people.
That would be a pretty daft instant contradiction, wouldn’t it?
But wait. Let’s say “PR” instead of “communicating”. Because PR = boo! bad! nothing to do with communicating!
Policing isn’t about PR. It’s about communicating with people.
Doesn’t quite work, does it? So let’s throw in something about the nasty internet:
Policing isn’t about PR and fancy websites. It’s about communicating with people.
Ah, that’s better. Second sentence is still a bit contradictory though. So let’s add in something about cutting crime. Cutting crime and communicating aren’t contradictory of course, …
Alistair Carmichael - http://alistaircarmichael.wordpress.com – the MP for Orkney and Shetland is a very welcome addition to the ranks of blogging Lib Dem Parliamentarians.
By The Voice | Published 6th February 2010 - 3:15 pm
There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader …
Here’s Nick Clegg on a recent visit to cheer on Burnley Lib Dems and their candidate Gordon Birtwistle, as they attempt to unseat Labour and stop the BNP. (With thanks to Hywel Morgan for the picture). What do you think they might be saying to each other, or thinking about each other?
Liberal Democrat Voice is an independent, collaborative website run by Liberal Democrat activists,
where any individual inside or outside the party can express their views. Views expressed on this website are those of the
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