UK-Elect General Election Forecast, January 2015. 

Hung Parliament - Labour Short By 40

The dramatic and still-increasing Scottish National Party support since the Independence Referendum is illustrated in this latest British political forecast - with the 51 seats achieved by the SNP sufficient to deprive Labour of an effective governing majority and to make them by far the third largest party. In fact, any result similar to that forecast would put the SNP in a very strong position to choose who governs Britain. Taken together with the rise of the UK Independence Party and the fall in Liberal Democrat support in the polls, there can be little doubt that British politics is entering one of its most fascinating periods ever.

This forecast was done by an experimental UK-Elect method based on a blend of the traditional Uniform National Swing and proportional loss forecasting techniques, but also taking account of recent local constituency opinion polls and byelections, and using multiple iterations to achieve the correct target percentages.

The GB percentages used for this forecast were Lab 33%, Con 32%, UKIP 15%, Lib Dem 9%, Green 6%. For Scotland the percentages used were SNP 45%, Lab 25%, Con 14%, Lib Dem 6%, UKIP 5%, Green 4%, and for Wales separate percentages were also used of Lab 36% Con 23% UKIP 18% Plaid Cymru 11% Green 5% and Lib Dem 5%. Other parties votes were not specifically set.

(If you prefer to forecast using alternative forecasting methods, your own percentages, the current opinion polls, using tactical voting, or even using different electoral systems, browse the UK-Elect on-line shop ). You can also try the UK-Elect Trial Version

Also, if you would like to forecast the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, London Assembly or your own local election, as well as the General Election, then click here to purchase

Note: for political campaign analysis maps showing in which constituencies the parties are currently doing better or worse than would be expected by current opinion polls, see the UK-Elect maps page.

Party Seats Change Labour 285 +28 Conservative 269 -34 SNP 51 +45 Liberal Democrat 20 -36 UKIP 1 -1 DUP 8 - Sinn Fein 5 - SDLP 3 - Green 2 +1 Plaid Cymru 3 - Others 3 -3 Labour Short By 40 - Hung Parliament

UK-Elect Election Forecast Maps Click on image to enlarge. See also more maps.

Notes: The forecast base was the 2010 General Election, although gains are compared with the current situation (at January 3rd 2015). An experimental UK-Elect forecasting method based on a blend of the Uniform National Swing and Proportional Loss methods was used, with local opinion polls (up to the end of December 2014) and by-election data, and also possible tactical voting, taken into account during the calculations. Multiple iterations were used to achieve the correct target percentages. Because of the experimental nature of the method used the confidence level in this forecast should be regarded as lower than normal, and it is expected that this method will be further refined before the next forecast.

See UK Election Forecasting Theory, Techniques and Controversial Discussions and UK Election Forecasting - A detailed explanation of the techniques used by UK-Elect for more details of UK-Elect forecasting techniques, or if you have a Windows-based PC then try some forecasting yourself using the UK-Elect Trial Version

UK-Elect v9.1 users can reproduce the above forecast by 1) Invoke the forecasting configuration dialog from the forecast menu option 2) Press the "Default" button to select the default UK-Elect settings 3) Change the forecasting method to custom/your own method 4) Change the forecasting area to combined (using separate %s), and tick the checkboxes for Scotland, Wales, and GB 5) Press the "Custom" button to invoke the custom forecasting configuration dialog 6) Press the "Experimental" button to select the experimental configuration settings 7) Press OK on the Custom Forecasting Configuration dialog and then the Forecasting Configuration dialog 8) Enter the overall poll percentages from the forecasting menu option 9) Enter the regional percentages for Scotland and Wales from the forecasting menu options 10) Press the yellow forecast button!
(Note that you may need to first update your data files from the UK-Elect downloads page to get the exact same results).