UK-Elect General Election Forecast, April 28th 2015.

Hung Parliament - Tie Forecast. Lab and Con both short by 53 seats.

In the latest, detailed (top 3 parties in every constituency) UK-Elect forecast, Labour and Conservative are BOTH forecast to win 272 seats, with the Scottish National Party on 55 seats, the Liberal Democrats 25, the Democratic Unionist Party 9, Sinn Fein 5, UKIP 3, Plaid Cymru 3, SDLP 3, Green 1 and Others 2.

This forecast was made using the new, improved, UK-Elect v9.4 method which takes account of even more factors than previously. Among the inputs taken into consideration by this forecast were: national opinion polls, regional opinion polls (for Scotland, Wales and London), the exact candidates standing in each seat and whether they were the incumbent, and if so, whether they won that seat for the first time at the previous election, by-elections, constituency opinion polls by Lord Ashcroft and others (adjusted according to how many days ago the fieldwork was done), and the change in the regional and national polls since the poll fieldwork or by-election.

The UK-Elect "adjust target percentages for date" option was also set for this forecast, adjusting the percentages to represent what we currently expect to happen on May 7th, rather than just using the current poll percentages as a target. This option has the affect of adjusting the input opinion poll percentages to take account of what happened in many past elections as the date of the election approached - i.e. that the support levels for the parties returned part-way towards their previous totals. In current circumstances this favours the Liberal Democrats slightly and disadvantages UKIP and the SNP.

The GB percentages input for this forecast were Con 34.5%, Lab 33%, UKIP 13%, Lib Dem 8.5%, Green 5.5%. For Scotland the percentages used were SNP 48%, Lab 25%, Con 16%, Lib Dem 5%, UKIP 2.5%, Green 2.5%, for Wales the percentages used were Lab 40% Con 26%, UKIP 13%, Plaid Cymru 11.5%, Lib Dem 5%, Green 4%, and for London the percentages used were Lab 44%, Con 34%, UKIP 8%, Lib Dem 8%, Green 5% Other parties votes were not specifically set. Note that the final forecast percentages differ from the input percentages due to the methodology used (including adjusting for the number of days until the election) - e.g. the final UK target percentages used were Con 34.5%, Lab 32.9%, UKIP 12.8%, LD 8.7%, Green 5.4%.

See also latest statistics, graphics and maps:
Constituencies: UK   Scotland   Scotland (by maj)   Wales   London
Percentages: Main Party Percentages In Every Constituency
Maps: UK   Scotland   Wales   London   E England   SW England   SE England   NW England   NE England   West Midlands   East Midlands   Yorks and Humberside   Gains   Losses   Swing   2nd

Party Seats Change Conservative 272 -31 Labour 272 +15 SNP 55 +49 Liberal Democrat 25 -31 UKIP 3 +1 DUP 9 +1 Sinn Fein 5 - SDLP 3 - Green 1 - Plaid Cymru 3 - Others 2 -4 Tie: Con and Labour Short By 53 - Hung Parliament See UK-Elect Latest Forecast for the UK-Elect 'Latest Forecast' page.

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

Additional UK-Elect generated maps and screenshots (Click to enlarge)
Hover cursor over map for more information, click on image to enlarge

Notes: The forecast base was the 2010 General Election, although gains are compared with the current situation (April 2015). The forecasting was made using the new, enhanced, UK-Elect v9.4 method, on a separate regional basis for Scotland, Wales, London, and Great Britain, with many other factors taken into consideration, including the number of days until the election, by-election results, local constituency opinion polls, and the changes in the national poll percentages since the by-elections and constituency opinion polls. Incumbency support was enabled, and configured to take account of whether or not the incumbent was standing again or standing down, and they were standing again it also took into consideration whether they had won the seat for the first time at the preceding election. (This is because some academic studies have suggested that the incumbency effect is greater for first time winners.)

The final candidates list was used for this forecast - UK-Elect adjusts all seat forecasts to take account of exactly which candidates and parties have been nominated.

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.

UK-Elect v9.4 users will be able to reproduce the above forecast when using the latest, most up-to-date version of UK-Elect. All users of a recent version can produce a similar result by downloading the latest constituency poll data from the UK-Elect downloads page, and then doing a "Guided Forecast" specifying the separate percentages for Scotland, Wales and London together with the overall GB percentages. Note that the method used was the UK-Elect v9.4 method with all the default UK-Elect settings for that method enabled, but date-specific adjustments (adjusting the calculation target percentages depending on the number of days until the election) were used for this forecast.

Any comment about this forecast? Add it below:

Can you run the 2015 General Election campaign better than the professionals?
Yes! No - let someone else do it
 
270soft - where gaming gets political!
Limited time offer - 20% discount off 270soft games - use code UKEL-CIFV-KCSI