Latest Forecast: Labour Lose, Tories Gain, Liberal Democrats Aim For Balance of Power

UK-Elect Forecast, July 2006. This forecast should be regarded as "for fun only" as it is still too early for any serious forecast of the 2009/2010 election.

For the purpose of this forecast we have assumed that the Conservative recovery of recent elections will continue, but that this will be partly offset by Labour winning back some of their voters from the Liberal Democrats.

The percentages used for this forecast are Con 38%, Lab 35%, Lib Dem 19%. Other parties votes were not specifically set.  (If you prefer to forecast using your own percentages, the current opinion polls, or with a lower/higher level of tactical voting, download a trial version or browse the UK-Elect on-line shop.

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In this election simulation we assume that, after 12 or more years, there will continue to be some anti-government sentiment, and that therefore a maximum of 10% of people would be prepared to vote tactically against Labour in the right circumstances. (It should be emphasised that this figure is not the number that we think will vote tactically, simply the maximum number who would be prepared to do so if they lived in a constituency where the circumstances were right.) This tactical voting calculation is also now adjusted to take more account of party second-preferences (e.g. both Labour and Conservative supporters are more likely to be prepared to vote tactically for the Liberal Democrats than for each other.)

Taking all these factors into account, the current UK-Elect forecast for General Election 2009/2010  is:

Party Seats Change from 2005 election Labour 309 -46 Conservative 256 +58 Liberal Democrat 49 -13 DUP 9 - Scottish National Party 5 -1 Sinn Fein 5 - Plaid Cymru 4 +1 SDLP 3 - UUP 1 - Others 3 - Speaker 1 - NOC - Labour Short By 13 -44

Click on image to enlarge

Note: Labour majority shown above simply excludes the Speaker, Michael Martin,  from the calculation.

Notes: The forecast base was the 2005 General Election constituency situation, modified to take account of Welsh constituency changes - it should be noted that many other constituency boundaries will change before the next election. A uniform percentage swing method was used, and the percentages were applied to GB constituencies only. The assumption was made that up to 10% of the electorate would be prepared to consider voting tactically against the Labour Party (Note to UK-Elect users: the simulation was set to take account of party vote transfer preferences. The number of iterations was set to 3.) No attempt was made to apply more accurate Scottish or Welsh poll percentages to the forecasting of constituencies in those areas (hence the forecasting of Nationalist gains or losses is likely to be less accurate). Results from Northern Ireland are based on those of the last election and included for completeness only. The Labour majority figure here simply excludes the speaker from the calculation (Note: normally, in the event of a tie, the Speaker will vote with the Government.)