OK, purely for fun, here is my prediction of the General Election result. This is not in any sense a reflection of what I want to happen. It is rather what I think will happen, my best guess. Anyone want to see if they can get closer?
Conservatives 283
Labour 259
SNP 51
Lib Dem 31
DUP 9
Sinn Fein 5
Plaid Cymru 4
SDLP 3
UKIP 2
Green Party 1
Independent 1
Speaker 1
I think there’ll be a lot of UKIP supporters that will switch to Conservatives. Between them, these parties have support of 45% to 50% according to the polls. I predict a lot of tactical voting in Scotland to minimise the SNP gains. I also think a significant number of Scottish voters will reluctantly return to Labour in a forlorn attempt to try to make them the biggest party. I therefore predict;
Conservatives 351
Labour 215
SNP 41
Lib Dem 21
DUP 9
Sinn Fein 5
Plaid Cymru 2
SDLP 3
UKIP 0
Green Party 1
Independent 1
Speaker 1
LAB 274
CON 270
LIB 27
UKIP 3
SNP 53
GRN 1
OTHERS 4
NI 18 (same as usual don’t want it but DUP may take East Belfast)
Don’t know Scotland very well but I note Craig’s SNP score is lower though maybe he gave a couple of the seats to the Libs .
The Lib vote is sort of holding in the CON/LIB marginals but it’s vanished elsewhere(the anti war/Clegg vote .THey can always spring a suprise though .
UKIP could take three or four off the Tories and they may well affect the vote elsewhere.
No idea where the very high Tory figures are coming from cant see them above 280
SNP are getting a landslide of course but quite how high I don’t know its uncharted territory .
‘Bibi’ has taken 7 weeks to form a coalition. He is still on a knife edge.
Netanyahu Strikes Deal For Israel Coalition
Israel’s PM pulls together a razor-thin majority with less than two hours to spare – but now faces a struggle to get his own way.
http://news.sky.com/story/1479042/netanyahu-strikes-deal-for-israel-coalition
FT
Last-minute tactical voting could decide the election
May 6, 2015 7:02 pm
David Cameron and Ed Miliband go into polling day with the final opinion polls putting Conservatives and Labour still neck and neck — five weeks of campaigning has failed to break the deadlock.
According to the political betting market, Mr Cameron is reckoned to be on course to win about 290 seats to Mr Miliband’s 265, a result that might just allow the prime minister to cling on to power with Liberal Democrat support.
But the Labour leader has more potential allies in a hung parliament, hence the equal odds some bookmakers offer on Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband becoming Britain’s next prime minister.
However, last-minute shifts of voters in closely contested seats — or widespread tactical voting, as urged by some newspapers — could change everything in an election of fine margins.
Polling organisations have spent the final hours of the campaign trying to detect such shifts, such as the “shy Tory” phenomenon that saw an 11th-hour increase in support for John Major in the tight 1992 election.
Some pollsters have concluded that if there is a late shift, it may only happen when voters enter the polling station.
YouGov on Wednesday put both Labour and Tories on 34 points; ICM had them tied on 35 points; TNS gave the Tories a one-point lead; Opinium’s final survey also gave the Conservatives a one-point advantage.
The final polls suggest Ukip is the third-biggest party nationally in terms of voter support, typically polling 11-12 per cent, with the Liberal Democrats around 9 per cent.
/..
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6707933a-f402-11e4-bd16-00144feab7de.html#axzz3ZIOilqcw
They predict
Conservatives 281
Labour 266
SNP 51
Liberal Democrats 27
DUP 8
Plaid Cymru 4
SDLP 3
Ukip 1
Greens 1
Other 8
Ooh, What fun! Prediction: DVD nukes London and Scotland is set free.
Look, we knocked over the USSR when it ceased to be of use, we can knock the UK over all the quicker. Put it out of its misery.
Murdoch wrote off the £300m NOWT to stop the Coulson hacking saga from reaching the Conservative party (they were being informed of what was in the inboxes of everyone from GB down at the last election). What will be the pound of flesh murdochski will demand of Cameron as he now comes back to power?! War with Iran, you heard it first here.
@Mary: “‘Bibi’ has taken 7 weeks to form a coalition. He is still on a knife edge.
Netanyahu Strikes Deal For Israel Coalition
Israel’s PM pulls together a razor-thin majority with less than two hours to spare – but now faces a struggle to get his own way.
http://news.sky.com/story/1479042/netanyahu-strikes-deal-for-israel-coalition”
7 weeks: crikey! Do you think that we, in Britain, could be seeing the same sort of problems that you describe above in your country in the next few weeks, Mary?
“Back in autumn 2014 Left Unity set itself a modest target of standing twelve candidates in the General Election as well as in a number of council seats.
As parliament dissolved ten Parliamentary candidates are going forward. Three of these will stand as Left Unity per se; John Pearson in Stockport, Stewart Weston in Bristol West and Simon Hardy in Vauxhall ( in Lambeth south London). Bruce Whitehead in Edinburgh North and Leith, Feliciity Dowling in Neston and Ellesmere Port, Steve Hall in Leigh, Ed Potts in Exeter, Kingsley Abrams in Bermondsey and Old Southwark, Glynn Robbins in Bethnal Green and Bow and Nick Wrack in Camberwell and Peckham are standing on a joint Left Unity and Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) platform.”
My prediction is that none of thse candidates will save their deposit by getting more than 5% of the vote. The “sheeple” and the media rather than the incoherent and unworkable policies will be blamed.
Cunts (Conservatives) 278
Immensly Painful (Labour) 271
Stop Nuclear Proliferation (SNP) 51
Dem Fibs (Lib Dem) 25
Ghost (DUPpy) 8
False Leg (Sinn Fein) 5
Deadmen don’t wear (Plaid Cymru ) 5
Sleepers + Distractions (SDLP) 3
Little Ingerlanders (UKIP) 1
Nice People (Green Party) 1
As it should be (Independent) 1
Trough master (Speaker) 1
The national debt has doubled from £900b five years ago to £1,800b today. The ConDems whilst inflicting austerity on the poor (ostensibly to reduce/control the national debt), have simply continued burrowing at an even higher rate than the previous Nulabour Govt only TO FINANCE TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH !!
And the labour dumbos dont even know it !
I hope that the SNP won’t make a clean sweep of Scotland or anything near it. For that to happen, voters in Scotland will have to vote against independence even more cannily than during the referendum, i.e. for the strongest unionist candidate in each constituency, and be sure to turn out.
Resident Dissident, I wonder if you need to work on respecting people’s views a bit more. If people wish to vote to the Left, that is up to them, and if they are of the view that propaganda works and that people should stop voting for the major parties, that is also up to them. Why not instead tell us what you are for?
Left coalitions such as LU have a great deal of work to do, whereas Right coalitions only need keep the system as it is – a much easier task. It is easy also to say the system ain’t broke – but most of the country disagrees with that assessment!
Becky. coalition talks are not a ‘problem’, but vitally necessary to amalgamate each others policies and come up with a portfolio that resembles a mandate of voters from two/three parties, its horse trading.
That the City of London Corporation wants it over and done with faster rather than in 7 weeks, which is a normal period for coalition talks, depicts the need for stooges to rumble, chitties to be cashed in, they can’t wait and cite all sorts of reasons for hurrying the political puppets.
Whatever the make up is today as we await the real, falsified and fraudulent results, we will have a lot of hand wringing and then they are all reluctantly agree to try and manipulate us again, after all who could possibly work a Parliament on an ad hoc basis, issue by issue, that would be far too representative of reality.
It is a disproportional and unfair sham that is being perpetrated on us. That said I shall go and spoil my ballot paper.
As for Bibi, he has a one person majority and no doubt will claim that he has a mandate for war with anyone he chooses to.
I’d be very, very happy if the SNP got 51, but on the basis of past overoptimism, I’d be slightly surprised. Put me down for 46. Good LibDem constituency MP’s will hang on, I think – keeping the locals happy has always been a factor with their core support. I think UKIP might pull another one out of the bag, probably in East Anglia – 3/2 on 3 seats.
“Back in autumn 2014 Left Unity set itself a modest target of standing twelve candidates in the General Election as well as in a number of council seats.
“As parliament dissolved ten Parliamentary candidates are going forward. Three of these will stand as Left Unity per se; John Pearson in Stockport, Stewart Weston in Bristol West and Simon Hardy in Vauxhall ( in Lambeth south London). Bruce Whitehead in Edinburgh North and Leith, Feliciity Dowling in Neston and Ellesmere Port, Steve Hall in Leigh, Ed Potts in Exeter, Kingsley Abrams in Bermondsey and Old Southwark, Glynn Robbins in Bethnal Green and Bow and Nick Wrack in Camberwell and Peckham are standing on a joint Left Unity and Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) platform.”
My prediction is that none of thse candidates will save their deposit by getting more than 5% of the vote. The “sheeple” and the media rather than the incoherent and unworkable policies will be blamed.”
And there was I thinking Woodrow Wyatt had died years ago.
As long as we don’t get people like Resident Dissident in Left Unity it has a chance. I never could take the pseudo-socialists who were in the Labour Party for what they could get out of it. The Blairites. As Jon says we are a new party. We are not expecting to get 5% but it would be nice. Stephen Hall (Leigh) said yesterday:
“Now at 4% in the Leigh Constituency, which is more than Ukip got last time. It’s within range of beating the Lib-Dems and saving my deposit. It also equates with around 1,600 votes on a 60% voter turnout, and 200 votes in each Ward.
I need 5%, and around 2,000 votes to save my deposit, and around 2,500 to beat the Lib-Dems who got 8,049 in 2010.”
Resident Dissident will notice that Kingsley Abrams left the Labour Party because it had pro-austerity policies.
We have, and had, decent people in Left Unity, those who oppose Fascism and work for the benefit of society.
http://www.slaneystreet.com/2015/05/06/in-memory-of-godfrey-webster/
John Goss
In my honest opinion MWL (just like you) supporting semi-criminal spy turned oligarch who is violently attacking other countries and claim their territory is MORE of the threat to the Lefties. Not to mentioned that (above mentioned) semi-criminal spy turned oligarch OKed the largest gathering of ultra right fascists in his home town which accidentally had largest human casualties during WWII.
So as Russian proverb says you need to notice a huge log sticking out of you eye before you can see little straw in someone’s eye.
I now – somewhat belatedly – work on the assumption that the game is rigged. So, my predictions will be basically exactly what I don’t want to occur.
The SNP get less than 50, and the ConDems get enough for a not-very-stable minority Government, because Clegg knows he’s a dead duck otherwise.
SNP: 48
Tories: 290
Labour: 257
Libs: 29
The rest, don’t care. You’ll note that Lib\Lab will still have less than the Tories, so the Tory press will whine forever about there being an illegitimacy. These figures also mean that Lab\SNP have less than Tories\Libs. Remember, it doesn’t have to last long. Ed will get axed, Clegg too, and we have the weird position that Cameron might well become one of the longest serving UK PM’s, despite never having won an election. Which makes me wonder if he’s the spook candidate after all.
My prediction for seats won is :
Con 282
Lab 259
SNP 49
LibDem 32
DUP 9
SF 6
SDLP 2
PC 4
UKIP 3
Green 1
Respect 1
Ind 1
Speaker 1
The outcome in terms of who becomes PM and whether there is a Coalition or a Minority government would thus be in the balance. A Conservative led rainbow alliance (with LibDems, DUP and UKIP) would be possible in theory if a compromise on an EU in/out referendum were possible. That is a big but not impossible ask. However, given the tightness of the arithmetic, that would not promise stability.
A Con minority government would also be possible, especially given the huge effort that Con and the media would make to argue that the largest party in terms of votes and seats is entitled to present a Queen’s Speech – and that would be one tailored to make it hard for Lab to lead a successful attempt to vote it down.
The other option is a Lab/LibDem minority coalition, with the SNP being dared to vote them down. A crucial factor would thus be the ability of party leaders and teams to negotiate and sell to the public a relatively stable compromise. Despite the LibDems and the SNP being the two parties with greatest recent experience of negotiating compromises (formal and informal), there is considerable doubt about Lab having leaders with the temperament and skills to make a minority government work, whether in formal coalition with the LibDems or not.
The LibDems would – as Clegg desires – be in the position of queen-maker. In line with LibDem logic of stability being best for the country, they would then need to be prepared to tell Cameron that they would vote against a Con minority Queen’s Speech. If they then were able to negotiate a minority coalition agreement with Lab, that might work, even for five years. But my prediction is of a contentious Lab minority government. One compensation for Lab in such an unstable arrangement would be Con disarray following a Cameron defenestration.
People seem to assume that the DUP leans naturally towards a Conservative admin.
This is incorrect.
Their natural allies will be to the left, at least in financial/austerity terms.
There’ll be horse trading of course, but those 8 or 9 DUP seats will be much more content opposing a Cameron allliance, than supporting it.
Funnily enough, the DUP position is very similar to that emerging in many regions as an antidote to neoliberalism:
Left, on the economy. Right, on social issues.
Neoliberalism, by contrast, is Right, on the economy, but Left on social issues.
The Union is of course a massive issue for the DUP, but they depend for their support on the less well off, and their immediate enemy is much more the Conservative aligned Unionist Party and its economic policies, which they’ve managed to trounce in NI, than anything else.
[cm-org.uk – slightly delayed; spam filter false positive]
LibDem – 0