Land of Confusion
Three more polls published in the last ten days, which is kind of a sluggish pace with a snap GE on the horizon. You know that thing that drifts away when you come closer to it. Anyway what we have now is something MSM could describe as a 'Conservative surge' even if they still poll 3-4% lower than their 2017 result.
Updated super-sample includes six UK-wide polls fielded between 4 and 13 September. Sample size is 9,393 with a 0.98% MOE. Here is the weighted average of voting intentions it delivers:
At face value, a 2% lead over Labour sounds like good news for the Conservatives but as always things are not as simple as they appear. Three other players are poised to disrupt the two-party game again: SNP, Liberal Democrats and UKIP more or less in that order. Of these only the SNP would have a real impact on the projected seats (more on this below).
But the swings towards LibDems and UKIP are enough to generate some unstable situations for both major parties in a number of marginals where either LibDems or UKIP came third last year. Based on earlier patterns LibDems might appeal mostly to frustrated Conservative Remainers in the Southern 'Little England'. While UKIP might find friendly ears in the aborted Northern Powerhouse counties among Labour-Leave voters unsatisfied by Labour's current half-baked strategy on Brexit.
After the Ordeal
The updated seat projection unsurprisingly delivers a hung Parliament yet again. But with one interesting twist.
With Conservatives down to 307 seats the Con-DUP alliance would end up five seats short of a majority. While this would not preclude yet another Tory term with a minority government, it would still be an unwelcome symbol of Tories' inability to make their case convincingly enough, and would also fuel appetites for a Very Tory Coup.
And here comes the twist. If the Conservatives somehow managed to hold all their Scottish seats then they would bag 312 seats overall and the Con-DUP alliance would enjoy a one-seat majority. Not necessarily the most comfortable outcome in troubled times but still a majority. Which the strong SNP position in polls makes impossible for now. So much (again) for 'vote SNP get Tories'.
Get 'Em out by Friday
On this projection only 18 seats would change hands, a record low for over a century (aye, December 1910 again if you remember previous episodes).
The detailed list of seats projected to change hands does not point to any obvious Portiballs (or should it be Ballsillo?) moments. Theresa Villiers is old news and Zac Goldsmith never was unless you count losing his seat once already, and even this feat made headlines for just one news cycle.
Then the most interesting part obviously is that 11 of these 18 seats are in Scotland. With 3 others in London and only 4 in the rest of England, once more showing that Labour's liabilities lie South of the Wall and Scotland is not the key to Number 10.
The Battle of Epping Forest
Alternate scenarios factoring in MOE again point to a potentially unstable outcome with only roughly a 30% chance of an outright majority. Which would anyway require a statistically unlikely (for now) swing towards the Tories as they would need a 4% lead over Labour for a majority. But we've seen stranger things happen already, haven't we?
Current projection leaves us in already well-charted waters although with a slight swing towards the Conservatives. Stablest and strongest outcome would be 2015ish while odds are the likeliest would be somewhere between 1974ish and 1910ish. Nothing surprising here as recent projections have kept oscillating between tiny majorities and unmanageable stalemates.
Besides the two major English parties have to deal with organized infighting which would seriously weaken their respective leaders' position. Mogglodytes and Soubrynistas on one side, post-Blairites on the other probably number up to 25% of their respective Parliamentary parties. And there's little chance a GE, snap or otherwise, would alter this unless both parties resort to selective deselection. Which would in turn lead to further dissension and make matters worse.
Incidentally the Conservatives would hold Epping Forest (Winston Churchill's and Norman Tebbit's seat in a previous incarnation as Epping in some distant past) in all scenarios as it has been a Tory safe seat for the last 45 years. Same can't be said of neighbouring Chingford and Woodford Green. In the 'Labour Maximum' scenario Ian Duncan Smith would lose this seat he held by just 5% in 2017. Juist sayin…..
No Son of Mine
I have already described the impact of the Generation Divide on Scottish Parliament elections. Similar patterns also apply to House of Commons elections. As usual I ran separate simulations for Scotland and the rest of the UK. Scottish Westminster vote-by-age crosstabs are from Survation's most recent 'poll-till-you-boak' Scottish survey. And here are the voting intentions (different from the Holyrood ones) and seat projections by age.
The Scottish Westminster simulation shows a clear Generation Divide between Baby Boomers on one side and all other generations on the other, as did the Holyrood simulation. As usual the national seat projection is based on the one poll only for comparison's sake and not on any 'weighted rolling average' data.
For consistency, UK-wide data come from the most recent Survation poll, fielded early this month and which was slightly less Tory-leaning than the current rolling average. Here is what it predicts, voting intentions first and then seat projections. SNP voting intentions here are not reliable as they come from the tiniest of subsamples, which is why I substituted 'purely Scottish' data.
So if I sum it up here is what we have. The Generation Divide is further back in time than for Scottish Parliament. Only the oldest Baby Boomers would definitely return a strong Tory majority while the younger Baby Boomers and half of Generation X would sit on the fence and return a hung Parliament where a Lab-Lib coalition would be the only workable option. And the younger generations would deal Labour a victory of landslidish to tsunamish proportions.
Fun part of course is that both Generation Z and the older fringe of Baby Boomers would choose a true one-party state, although on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Or opposite corners of the upper-right quadrant of the Political Compass, depending on your perspective.
In both cases Scotland would be, quite fittingly, the last hub of resistance with 58 out of 81 Opposition MPs in the One-Labour-State and 35 out of 59 in the One-Tory-State. While DUP would owe its third-party status only to both Z'ers and Early Boomers choosing to blow up all opposition into subatomic particles all over England and Wales.
But enough fun for now, let's go back to the real world for a while.
Turn It On Again
It's always a good idea to keep all frequencies open, just in case. But not just right now. Keyword is: here comes nothing. Literally.
The LibDem Conference came and went and Storm Ali wiped it off the headlines before it even made any. Not that anything new or meaningful came out of it. Just Vince Cable and Willie Rennie making asses of themselves, which is neither meaningful nor new.
No great expectations either from Labour, Conservative or SNP conferences. Umunnista Coup won't happen. Mogglodyte Coup won't happen. IndyRef2 kick-off won't happen. Just have to wait until after Brexitocalypse for the juicy bits. Juiciest of all being of course the long awaited Surprise Snap Election of 2018, now pushed back to the Snap Election Season of 2019. Or not.
Of course totally unexpected upsets might still happen like Ross Thomson saying anything sensible or Scottish Greens thinking something through before issuing a press release. But I wouldn't hold my breath.
Anyway stay tuned for further broadcasts. Or not.
Saor Alba Gu Bràth
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