This Is Not A BLOG!

Date: 04/05/10

It's In The Box

I suppose I should be leaving this until tomorrow night, but - short of incriminating photographs of Gordon Brown raping a disabled badger or David Cameron being revealed as a 'Borg - I don't see things shifting very much now.

While I connive at promoting an impression that I feel all politicians should have a plague of anal boils visited upon them for the entire time that they are in office, I am enough of an anorak to be very interested in electoral calculations (this is analogous to the fact that - having loved football for many years - I now detest what it has become, and my interest in it is merely historical and statistical). I have studied - in my crude, untutored way - the results of General Elections going back to 1979, and have spent quite a few evenings of late weighing up what I'm being told by the opinion polls (and making hefty reference to the fine UK Polling Report site) and balancing them against my own innate and learned instincts regarding how people tend to vote.

With this in mind, therefore, I present to you my prediction for Thursday.

We will see a hung parliament, with the following share of seats:

• Labour: 273
• Conservative: 269
• Liberal Democrat: 77
• DUP: 9
• SNP: 7
• Plaid Cymru: 5
• Sinn Féin: 5
• SDLP: 3
• Independent Unionist: 1
• The Speaker: 1

Now, I know these figures seem to be at variance with the narrative in the media and punditocracy that - at the very least - the Tories are going to end up as the largest single party and not too far from a position where they could form a minority government and try to brazen it out. My own figures concede that as a possibility, in that I assign to them a margin of error of ten seats either way for Lab and Con. But here are my reasons for the figures I've just given:

1. They're broadly in line with what the opinion polls are saying (adjusted for my own scepticism).
2. Just as the pollsters were surprised when the Conservatives won in 1992 when more people voted blue than had told the surveys, so this time marking your paper for Labour may be The Vote That Dare Not Speak Its Name.
3. In a contest perceived as being tight, there is a tendency for a sizable proportion of the electorate to play it safe. This is augmented by the view of the experienced that about ten per cent of those who vote don't finally make their choice until they're in the booth with the pencil in their hand, where the same tendency is likely to apply.
4. There have been reports of a sharp increase in people registering to vote. This would indicate the strong possibility of a much higher turnout than in 2005. This will tend to benefit the centre and left, as those on the right already have a higher tendency to vote.
5. Unlike in 1997, when the electorate's sense of disgust was focussed entirely in one direction, the general feeling this time is much less direct, and will tend to be against both the main parties in roughly equal proportion (Tory MPs were at least as culpable over the expenses business as their Labour counterparts, and their transgressions were more visible).
6. Just gut instinct.

So, all we can do now is wait and see.

On Thursday night/Friday morning, I hope to provide you with A First for The Judge, in that I will be what I believe is called 'live blogging', in that - on this page - I will be posting regular updates throughout the night with interesting results and my comments. We'll see how far I get, but if any post shows a jumble of letters and numbers, this will mean that I have dozed off and am slumbering gently with my head on the keyboard. 

File under: Politics