Jeremy's Den: November 2019

28/11/2019

Westminster Projection - E-14 Update

Christmas Shopping Spree Election E-14
29th Anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's resignation, also Alistair Darling's 66th birthday and Friedrich Engels' 199th

What Goes On? 🔊
© Lou Reed, 1969

The Polling Spree for the Christmas Shopping Spree Election goes on as expected with 36 GB-wide polls conducted so far since Dissolution Day, and more than half of them since nominations closed and the actual candidates in each constituency were known. Now I just anticipate the punditariat telling us on Election Night that 'the Brexit Party definitely hurt Labour', after telling us earlier this month that 'the Brexit Party will hurt the Conservatives most', with the end of the sentence 'but just because they stood down in all Tory seats' buried in the fine print at the bottom just as in Squirrel Killer Jo's deliberately misleading bar charts of voting intentions. What's clear is that the trends of voting intentions are still not good for Labour. The Labour surge started late, after the Conservatives had already squirrelled away the first wave of LibDem defectors, those who misheard PM Jo and thought she said 'neither Corbyn nor Corbyn', or was it what she actually said? Then Labour's vote share rose more slowly than the Conservatives' as the influx of Brexit Party voters repainting themselves from turquoisish blue to real deep blue outnumbered the second wave of LibDem defectors, the Orange-To-Red ones who truly believed PM Jo said 'neither Johnson nor Johnson'. Labour might have found some encouragement in the last ICM and ComRes polls crediting the Conservatives with 'only' a 7% lead, but before that we've had the Tories leading by double digits on a continuous string of 19 polls. Which means for three days. Naw, just kiddin' here, that was six days.

Opinium have now changed their approach, two weeks after YouGov did, and now prompt voters with only the parties that actually stand in their constituency. For the test run they asked the generic question prompting all parties too. They published both sets of results and the one striking difference is that 3% of respondents shift from the Brexit Party to the Conservatives when prompted with only the parties actually standing. So this is the first definite evidence that Nigel Farage could actually win the election for Boris Johnson. Just have to wonder what the price tag will be. Nige has already ruled out a hermine so I guess some not too distant embassy with reasonably little actual work involved would do the trick. By the way one pollster called Kantar really made my day with updates to their methodology (scroll down to the bottom of the page). Aye you read it right they allocate some respondents to any party by imputation, which in Human English means they guessed. So I guess my Tory neighbour will vote Tory, but shouldn't he be imputed to the SNP by the 'nearest neighbour' algorithm? After all I am his fucking nearest neighbour. More seriously and as a statistician I can tell you 'nearest neighbour' is a tricky approach. Getting it right would require something like the Political Compass questionnaire, which is way beyond anything you can ask in a standard voting intentions poll. Or you have to rely on some simplified approach as 'rate yourself on a far-right to far-left scale' and have to deal with a huge number positioning themselves dead center. So Kantar definitely did a lot to restore my faith in the polling class. By the way did I mention already that I do love sarcasm? Sure I did, didn't I?

There is definitely a sense of elation among Labour supporters in the media since Labour clause-fived their Masterplan For The 2020s. Those of you who have watched Ken Loach's The Spirit of '45 will get the point and understand the level of enthusiasm Jeremy Corbyn can generate when he paints himself as both Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan Reincarnate. But Corbyn has a problem though: he has to play both parts himself as he definitely lacks appropriate sidekicks, and don't even think of mentioning McDonnell, Abbott or Thornberry here. Now there is always a silver lining when the Tories call Labour's manifesto 'a return to the 40s' because that's exactly the spirit and CCHQ have at least got one thing right in this campaign. But it's worth reminding you that in most cases, a man trying to change the world fails for one simple and unavoidable reason: everyone else (aye, that's another quote and I think you will never guess where from). Then Labour might find some reasons to be optimistic in the record number of younger people who have registered to vote and also in Johnson's also sub-par ratings, though he still beats Corbyn two-to-one on the Prime Ministerialability scale. In the end it might all boil down to how many 'moderates' would choose Corbyn as the antidote to Johnson vs how many would choose Johnson as the antidote to Corbyn. Tough call here despite Johnson's newfound persona as Marmite-On-The-Doorstep.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall 🔊
© Bob Dylan, 1962

Even if the long-term trend is still unfavourable, Labour have gained a few votes over the last week. My current Poll'O'Polls includes the six most recent ones, conducted between 21 and 26 November by six different pollsters (YouGov, Survation, Deltapoll, Kantar, ComRes and ICM). Super-sample size is 9,342 with a theoretical 1.01% margin of error. Now we have the Tories leading by 9.5% GB-wide, which is better than a week ago but still uncomfortably high from Labour's point of view. We have the same situation in England where the Tories lead by 11.5%, which again is better than a week ago but still delivers a sizeable majority of seats. The Brexit Party vote is still slowly melting away while the LibDems are slightly lower than on last week's rolling average. Which in fact means they're losing ground to Labour in the battleground areas where it really matters.

As always there are some paradoxes and counter-intuitive factors in recent polls. The day-to-day plot of current vs 2017 polling looks actually better for Labour than the rolling average would make you think. Labour have caught up with their 2017 voting intentions at the same point in the campaign while the Conservatives are slightly below and the LibDems slightly above. But Labour also have had some weak polling some days earlier so it might just be a random variation. Corbyn's campaigning and the New English Socialism manifesto might go down really well within Labour ranks but we don't have any evidence yet that all this really made a strong impression on the general public. Bear in mind too that the Tory-sponsoring media have much more powerful means to set the tone of the campaign than Labour or the SNP. Negative messages against both are to be expected in droves in the next two weeks and conveniently timed. Like a conservative Rabbi who hasn't been heard of for months and now suddenly has a lot of things to say about Corbyn. Which is kept in the headlines for days while the media conveniently bury the Muslim Council of Britain's calls to thoroughly address islamophobia within the Conservative Party. Asinus always the same asinum fricat.

Polls show the oppositions still face an uphill battle and the current First Minister of England might very well be the chosen one for Number Ten on Friday The Thirteenth. It is nevertheless obvious that both Labour in England and the SNP in Scotland have strong talking points that can be weaponized against the Conservatives. Corbyn now has all the ammunition he needs about Johnson selling out the NHS to Trump's corporate donors and all he has to do is to make it stick for the next two weeks. To get that done he just has to use Johnson's favourite stunt: whatever the question, shift the debate to 'NHS Sell-out' just as Johnson shifts any embarrassing question to 'Get Brexit Done'. And of course there is the never-ending supply of blatant lies from Johnson and his Cabinet Ministers that the opposition can put to good use even if the establishment media try to cover them up. Labour, and also the SNP after Andrew Neill's distasteful bullying of Nicola Sturgeon, have every reason to hold the Tory-enabling media to account for not holding Johnson and his minions to account. Or let social media do it for them, has been known to work and would make it easier to deservedly ridicule Team Blue.

Sign Of The Times 🔊
© Bryan Ferry, 1978

In related news, Deltapoll surveyed three more London constituencies (Chelsea and Fulham, Cities of London and Westminster, Hendon) while Survation polled Great Grimsby in Lincolnshire, a Labour seat since 1945, and predict it will switch to the Conservatives on a surprisingly high margin. Quite clearly here the Brexit Party hurts Labour and helps the Conservatives, something of a pattern in Northern Leave seats. Otherwise no big surprise in the London seats: three Tory incumbents, three Tory holds. And the Brexit Party sitting these out only helps marginally as the New Model Blackshirts don't do well in London generally. But there is a LibDem side effect here that turns Hendon from a Con-Lab marginal into a safe Conservative hold. Nothing special to say about Chelsea and Fulham which was an uphill battle for Labour anyway.

The good part here comes from the Cities' constituency, Chuka Umunna's chosen landing pad after he realized any Labour candidate would woodchip him in Streatham, and a Tory seat since 1885 when it was just City of London or since 1950 in its present incarnation. Obviously he made some impression, chipping off votes from both Red and Blue, but he still fails to score an upset here and the seat is predicted to stay Blue even with a much reduced majority. Now this was probably meant as a kamikaze run for Chuka as Swinson Central could easily have parachuted him on a more promising seat like Bermondsey and Old Southwark or Richmond Park, both steadily projected as LibDem gains. Or Vince Cable could have anointed him Heir Apparent in Twickenham. Then I guess many at Swinson Central will be happy to see Chuka getting one in the arse, as his unquenchable thirst for self-promotion and positions of power would have made him a liability had he succeeded in gaining a solidly Tory seat. That way he won't take any spotlight off PM Jo and she surely will thank the Cities' voters for that. Subliminally. Jo, you can aim the nukes away from London now. YouGov also polled Wales for their monthly survey on behalf of ITV Cymru and Cardiff University, three weeks after the last one but then they had to fit it into the campaign period. This one is good for Labour in the sense they lose fewer votes than in earlier polls, but it still says they lose four seats there, with many others held only by shaky margins. The irony here is that the LibDems would lose Brecon and Radnorshire, the much publicized 'successful' testbed for Unite Remain, back to the Conservatives. I have already said their by-election gain was built on quicksand and absolutely did not prove what they wanted us to believe it proved and it comes back to bite them in the arse. Sadly Plaid Cymru would lose Ceredigion to the LibDems, but they have a 50-50 chance of gaining Ynys Mon in a close three-way with Labour and the Conservatives.

Then of course the most disturbing shocker of the week was Panelbase's poll of Scotland, which I already mentioned three days ago when assessing the alternate realities that could spell doom for the SNP. Ironically news about this poll was first spread by a tweet from Ruth Davidson. Did we mishear when she said she was not taking that PR job after all? Or does she not trust Jackass Carlaw to handle even good news correctly? Then another Scottish poll was published by Ipsos MORI, with much more satisfying results for the SNP. Below is the weighted average of these two polls and the seat projections from these results, from worst to best possible outcome for the SNP. The Tory vote is quite close to its 2017 level, meaning the SNP's dream of wiping them out probably won't materialize. Then the Labour vote is somewhat higher than could be expected from earlier polls, even if they would still lose all their 2017 gains. There is a strong case to be made that a large number of 18-34yr olds have registered to vote for the first time to support Corbyn's Broadband Socialism. This is certainly the case in England and there is no reason to believe it is not in Scotland. And they are just the kind of voters the SNP need to switch to overturn slim Tory majorities in a handful of seats. The tricky part is that gaining such votes in the Central Belt wouldn't help, it has to be in the North East mostly. Good luck with that especially when Team Jackass is already going after them.

These polls are a warning that an almost 2015ish landslide is not in the making. Yet. And as usual they say that turnout is the key, in case you haven't got the message the first time. So more leafleting and canvassing in the dead of night, like just before supper, and a massive GOTV drive from the SNP. By the way I already told you that I would not tell you 'I told you so' but then I have to tell you that I told you a week ago we had to get ready for a 42% SNP / 28% Tories vote. Now the two new polls say it's 42% / 27% which delivers the same number of seats for the SNP as the Tories on 28%. But mind you, the ever-cautious Martin Baxter at Electoral Calculus now has the SNP anywhere between 20 and 46 seats after some seriously thought through tweaking of the basic data. Not that that made me feel any better or any worse either. Interestingly too the Scottish Greens are credited with 1.4% of the votes for 22 candidates, almost a proportional increase on their 2017 result when they got 0.2% for 3 candidates. And which proves they don't make more of an impression now than they did then despite all the gesturing and posturing and backstabbing. Voters know best.

The In Crowd 🔊
© William Page, 1965

The seat projections this week are somewhat different from what they were two or three weeks ago despite the Conservatives' lead over Labour being back to the same level. Recent Welsh and Scottish polling means that a few seats have switched back from the Conservatives to Labour in Wales and some from the SNP to the Conservatives in Scotland, with some also switching from the LibDems to Labour in England. So Labour again clear the 200-seat hurdle according to my model, which won't make them feel better anyway as this is still a 1983ish result, and the Conservatives here bag a solid 42-seat majority. Other models reach the same conclusion when I feed their 'user prediction' options with the same voting intentions, though with the usual differences in numbers. With all the usual caveats factored in, now we have a Tory majority somewhere between 20 and 80 seats, which might be just what the First Minister of England needs to pass his worse-than-May's Brexit Deal and move on. Interestingly Electoral Calculus' Advanced Thing in now far less favourable to the Tories than uniform swing when it was the other way round until now. So I guess they must have tweaked their algorithms again without telling us. Anoraks will be anoraks.

The various predictor sites have also updated their own predictions, which might differ from what I got using their 'user prediction' option as they do not use the exact same rolling average as me. Which is just one sign of the never-ending debate about the proverbial poll-of-polls. How many polls should be included and how far back should the sample go? Should older polls be simply cast away or should they be incrementally down-weighted? Quite irrelevant for the readers as long as everyone is clear about their methodology but then what would anoraks do with all the time they have on their hands if they did not quibble over minute details?

Anyway nobody sees anything but a Conservative majority in the chicken's entrails right now. Just as nobody foresaw a hung Parliament in 2017 at the same point in the campaign. Which does not mean a hung Parliament can't happen in two weeks but I stick to my view that it is an extremely unlikely outcome. The key seats are in England as always and Tories outnumber Labour 299 seats to 143 Doon Sooth on current polling, with no credible hints that it could change enough anytime soon to overturn the predicted Tory majority. Just bear in mind that Corbyn would need about 280 seats for a Labour minority government to become a plausible option and right now he's 70 seats short of that according to my model. Some major upset would definitely be needed to switch that many seats. This is supported by the detailed results from YouGov's MRP model, which was the only one to predict a hung Parliament in 2017 and now predicts a 68-seat Tory majority. Interestingly YouGov here have the Scottish seats going 43 SNP, 11 Conservatives, 3 LibDems, 2 Labour. Their detailed results are sometimes quite surprising. The Conservatives would lose Stirling and East Renfrewshire to the SNP, but hold Gordon which looked like a more likely SNP gain on other projections. Labour would hold Edinburgh South and Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill when other projections see the latter as the easiest SNP gain. LibDems would not only fail to gain North East Fife but also lose Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross to the SNP. And for PM Jo's fans out there, all seventeen of them, YouGov says she would hold East Swinsonshire on 38% to the SNP's 33%, which is actually a quite mediocre result.

Goin' Down 🔊
© Don Nix, 1969

Under current polling 86 seats would change hands, somewhat similar to 1900 (81 changes) and 1970 (86 changes). But don't read too much into this. The 1900 election was an odd one as seats actually switched back and forth between the Conservatives and Liberals and the overall tally after the elections was pretty much the same as before. Only remarkable event back then is that it is the year when the Labour Party (then known as the Labour Representation Committee) got his first two MPs, Keir Hardie and Richard Bell. Admittedly Hardie had already been elected MP for the Independent Labour Party in 1895 but the ILP does not fully count in Labour's genealogy as it never merged with Labour and survived as a distinct entity until 1975. Then 1970 was one of these elections where the Conservatives defeated Labour and took over as the Government. It's remarkable though as the first time the SNP secured a seat in a general election rather than in a by-election, and unfortunately also the year when Winnie Ewing lost the Hamilton seat she had gained in a 1967 by-election. But let's go back to the present day.

The balance of gains and losses and the cartography of changes are again not good at all for Labour, though slightly less catastrophic than in earlier projections. They would now avoid embarrassing symbolic losses like Sedgefield, Bolsover and West Bromwich West, but still lose 18 seats in the North and 13 in the Midlands where pressure from the Brexit Party would still be felt and switch many working class Leave voters. There is also an interesting situation on the horizon for the LibDems. Not so long ago my model had them on 50+ and now they don't reach even 30. It would not take much for them to end up with fewer seats after the election than they had on Dissolution Day. Just as happened to the Liberal-SDP Alliance in 1983 despite common wisdom claiming they did well.

Remake Remodel 🔊
© Bryan Ferry, 1972

Current polling now predicts 70 marginal seats including 45 in England and the two main English parties have just as much to lose if any of the possible alternate outcomes comes true. The 'Con Max' scenario would take Labour back to 1923 instead of back to 1983 and it would definitely take a long long time for them to recover. And 1923 being also the year of Labour's first government under Ramsay MacDonald is probably something they don't want to be reminded of either. But there is a better scenario among the possible options.

Now the interesting part is what could happen if the Conservatives did really less well than predicted and we end up with a hung Parliament like the one in my 'Lab Max' projection. I did the math and an All-Oppositions Alliance would outnumber a Conservative-Irish Unionists Alliance by two seats, 323-321 with Sinn Féin still not showing up. And of course this will never happen as the real alternative would be a Con-Lib Pact on 350 seats and we all know this would be much more likely. Obviously Deputy PM Jo would find herself a shitload of excuses for the ever attractive ministerial cars and expenses. Hopefully we will never have to go through this.

I Thought 🔊
© Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, 2002

Can't end this without a few personal random thoughts, but I will try to keep them concise and focused. First of all this campaign has reached a new level of obscenity when party leaders were asked if they would push the nuclear button. How this can even be considered a relevant and legitimate question is beyond me. I'm totally with Nicola Sturgeon on this and I am thunderstruck anyone would consider answering that and not telling the host it's the most outrageous question they've ever been asked and they won't even grace it with any kind of answer. You just have to wonder what the answers would be if the question was rephrased like 'would you consider it part of the job to kill some hundred million people in one strike?'. Which is what 'pushing the button' actually is when you don't try to disguise it as 'protecting national interest', which it would not protect anyway as the UK would be instantly vaporized too, something the Trident cultists conveniently fail to remind us. Then it would quite spoil the fun of the campaign, wouldn't it? Much better to see the First Minister of England making an ass of himself over a sheep's ass.

Master of Sheep: Holy fuck, has this moron even seen a live sheep once in his life before?

PR guy: Shut your mouth, Boris, that grin makes you look like Ross Fucking Thomson
Reporter: Stay with us for exclusive broadcast of PM kicked in the balls by angry sheep

Then we still have to endure two weeks of a truly appalling campaign where lies and smear have become the norm. It says a lot about the sorry state of the Once United Kingdom that we have stooped down to the level of American campaigns but of course it comes as no surprise when the leading contestant is a Trump cultist who would sell any of the children he does not remember having fathered if that opened the door to Number Ten. And there is massive irony in the Conservatives pretending to defend 'British values' when the only things they value are their own positions and handing their corporate donors huge profits stolen from the people in return for their dark money. Then Little England ready to keep this lot in power for five more years is a compelling reason to break up that Precious Union that never was one but just a colonial empire designed to serve English interests and no others. Ceterum autem censeo and you know the rest, don't you?

By the way I hope you liked the Bryan Ferry soundtrack today. I know he actively opposes the ban on fox-hunting and supports the Countryside Alliance but, believe it or not, so does Roger Waters who is otherwise as far from a true blue Conservative as can be. Of course Ferry is one and also opposes Scottish Independence but I'd say his most serious offence is having described David Cameron as 'a bright guy'. But that was ten years ago so I guess he can be forgiven now.

Humans say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions
Why? Do they think there's a shortage of bad ones?
(Andromeda, episode Forced Perspective, 2001)

25/11/2019

The Scottish Play - Act V of MMXIX

Going Home 1979, Hearthammer 1991, Siol Ghoraidh 1989

A few days before I published my latest Westminster update, a fellow Scottish tweep suggested I do a simulation on the effects of low turnout in Scotland at the Christmas Shopping Spree Election. Which was actually something I had in mind but right then I was doing another kind of simulation, about the effect of the Unionist vote coalescing around the Conservatives, which you can see in my previous article. Then the differential turnout idea stuck, because it is a good one, and also because it looks like a better way to motivate SNP voters, the couch-slouching-on-Irn-Bru-drip ones at least, to get the fuck out to vote. Which they did in 2015 and did not in 2017, for all the reasons I have already listed. And the tone of the current campaign proves beyond doubt that the SNP top brass reached the same conclusion and will concentrate on the one BIG issue (guess you have already figured out which one) and leave rambling about devolved matters during a GE campaign to Scottish Labour, who still haven't read the whole of the series of Scotland Acts. Then another of my followers suggested I made my articles more 'digestible', which he meant in a good way like in 'shorter and fucking focused, lad' and I have to say I tend to agree as I sometimes have a hard time finding out where the fuck I was actually going when I reread past articles. And longish sentences without punctuation don't help either. So here we go, a shorter one, focused just on what could possibly go wrong in Scotland on 12 December. And that fucking lengthy and undigestible intro is also a fine excuse to squeeze in another Runrig video before I move on to the heart and liver of the matter. Especially as the extra one is The Story from their very last studio album, which I rate as one of the most brilliant songs the MacDonald brothers ever wrote. Sure you don't mind.... Or do you? Really?

Where are we now?

When I started writing this article three days ago, I started by whining about having only one recent full Scottish poll, which was (and still is) one month old already. Which was a major change from 2017 when we already had seven Scottish post-dissolution polls at the same point in the campaign, and also from 2015 when we had five. Then Big Ben struck thirteen and Skye slid beneath the waves of The Mighty Atlantic, when out of the blue came that now infamous Panelbase poll that has probably already shattered the whole SNP campaign strategy. I had also prepared projections based on Scottish subsamples of GB-wide polls, which I usually don't do for all the obvious reasons already stated by me and others. So don't take this as more than a fun exercise on what polls say, or don't. So here is what my model projects from YouGov's and Panelbase's Scottish polls, YouGov's and other pollsters' subsamples and the aggregate of all subsamples over the last three weeks. Note that all the projections have one thing in common: they predict that Stephen Gethins will lose North East Fife to the LibDems. I don't think this will ever happen but I kept is as delivered in the name of mathematical purity, even if it goes against my hunches and political likelihood. Then I guess PM Jo's catabysmal trainwreck on Question Time will also nosedive the LibDem vote generally as they lose yet some more of the goodwill votes they had squirrelled over the last few months.

I singled out YouGov here partly because they have the most frequent pollster miles and also because they have become James Kelly's pollster of choice recently for some good reasons and others not so good. One of the latter is obviously that they are the most SNP-friendly of all. You can certainly argue, like James does, that their greater backlog and better methodology make them mor reliable. Or you could argue that some unknown skews in their demographics deliver some SNP bias here as they deliver some Tory bias in their England results. There is some massive irony here in YouGov totally missing what the Panelbase poll found, while the aggregate of other pollsters' subsamples matched it. Just wondering if James will revise his profiles of Scottish constituencies for the National, though they were largely non-committal enough to not need revising whatever the polls say. So for now it might be wiser to follow the more pessimistic views, because there is a fucking hell of a difference between gaining seven seats and gaining sixteen, and not just because one is more than double the other. A lot of difference in the way the English MSM can spin it, the Conservatives can spin it and even the SNP themselves can spin it. If the Tories hold more than ten seats as Panelbase and some others predict, they can easily argue that there is not that much appetite for Independence after all (more later to disprove this), and that blue rosettes remain the best shields against the assaults of the demonic separatists. And the SNP gaining seats only or mostly from Labour would just signal yet another realignment within the left-wing electorate, which has already happened twice, or so we were told. So for starters, after recovering from the shockwave of the Panelbase poll, I updated my earlier simulation about the Unionist vote coalescing around the Conservatives.

What we have here on updated vote shares is not that much different from what I got the first time. There are just fewer steps as the Conservatives start from a much higher baseline that earlier with the YouGov poll. And again the SNP would still retain a majority of seats in a 40%-40% situation. Which probably would not impress the Unionists that much anyway. But it is actually not the main point here as this simulation deals only with reshuffling the votes within the Unionist camp. So it says nothing about the consequences of a lower turnout or whatever patterns of differential turnout. More on this after the Runrig interlude.

Loch Lomond © Traditional, 1841ish or about
Hearts Of Olden Glory © Calum MacDonald, Roderick MacDonald, 1987
The last songs of the last show of The Last Dance tour

What could possibly go wrong?

Now let's go to my first differential turnout simulation. I will keep this one simple with only one variable: the number of SNP votes. Originally I intended to take the baseline voting intentions from the last YouGov poll, only slightly tweaked. The poll was conducted before the Brexit Party stood down in Tory-held constituencies, so I intended to change the baseline data from 22% Tory and 6% Brexit to 25% Tory and 3% Brexit, which looks like a good idea at the time and a more realistic assessment of changing voting intentions. Then came the Panelbase poll, which also changes the baseline and the seat projection to an even less favourable starting point for the SNP. Which better fits the whole purpose of the exercise, which is to evaluate the worst case scenarios for the SNP in a realistic contexte. Hypothetically I factored in here the same overall turnout as in 2015 (2,910k voters), to be on the optimistic side of things. The SNP on a predicted 40% would then bag a baseline of 1,156k voters and the Conservatives an already ominous 802k.

The next step is easy: incrementally decrease the number of SNP voters while keeping all the other parties on the same number of votes, until we reach an overall turnout in the vicinity of 2017's, when 2,650k voters showed up at their polling place, and then one more step beyond to test a possible carcrash worst case scenario on just 2.6 million voters. Here the SNP ends up well under 1 million voters (2017 result was 968k votes) and has its vote share reduced to somewhere in the low thirties. As you might expect, this has a huge impact on the predicted distribution of seats.

The Conservatives' first gains; when we reach a 2;754k turnout, would be East Lothian from Labour, then Lanark and Hamilton East, Perth and North Perthshire from the SNP, who would have already lost North East Fife to the LibDems., At the next step, the Conservatives would also snatch Argyll and Bute, Central Ayrshire and Edinburgh South West from the SNP. Ironically the last two steps would see Labour recovering a wee smitch, 'unlosing' Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill first and Midlothian next. This somewhat simplified version shows which SNP seats could be at risk and which expected gains are the weakest, which I expect Surgeon Central and the local branches already know. There is a weakness here as the whole simulation relies on just one variable and the real situation would be more complex, and potentially much more risky. So get braced for something more sophisticated and much more disturbing after Runrig's tribute to the Scots who lost everything in the Clearances.

And what could possibly go even wronger?

The mechanics here become more complex as I factor in four variables: the vote shares for the SNP, Labour, the LibDems and the Conservatives. To do this I gathered data on the likelihood to vote by voting intentions as published in YouGov's October poll, as Panelbase did not publish similar data in their November poll. Then this is all a theoretical construct, so YouGov's data are as good as any, even if I find them quite optimistic as they predict an overall turnout approaching 80%. But this reflects the motivation of voters who have already chosen one of the four major parties, and you can expect minor parties' voters and undecideds to be less motivated and likely to vote. And as usual in this kind of exercise, the differences between the various hypotheses matter more than the raw numbers per se. Then I recalculated the SNP's votes step by step as if the baseline reflected a high turnout including even the moderately motivated, those rating 5/10 on the likelihood to vote scale, and shrunk it until it included only the core highest motivated, those rating 10/10 on the likelihood to vote scale. And recalculated both the Conservative and Labour votes with the exact opposite hypotheses. Finally the LibDem vote becomes kind of the adjustment variable here as I decreased it when the Labour vote rose, on the somewhat risqué assumption that a number of moderately left-leaning LibDem voters could switch to Labour to help oust Johnson.

When you push the worst case scenario to the worstest, you get something that would make Jackass Carlaw spunk his Y-fronts faster than it would take Jo Swinson to answer a straight Yes-Or-No-To-Ministerial-Cars question. Then I'm not saying any of the trainwreck scenarios (the three bars on the right) could actually happen, but take a closer look at the third bar from the left. What we have here implies, by sheer coincidence, a combination of events that I would not totally rule out just yet. A dose a voter apathy resulting in the SNP and LibDems doing poorly and holding just their 2017 vote shares. A dose of Unionist coalescence around the Conservatives including a 3% swing from Labour to the Conservatives and a barely visible Brexit Party vote. And this is one case in which I did not push the variables too hard, unlike in the next and more unbelievable scenarios. It's just two steps away from the baseline delivered by the Panelbase poll and the factors that lead to such a result are far from extravagant. So don't say it absolutely can't happen. Or be ready for one fuck of a serious electoral hangover on Friday the Thirteenth.

In this scenarios the road to 19 Conservative seats matches was I said earlier. I will spare you the gory details of the most extreme one as it certainly belongs in fantasy land. But something in the mid-range definitely could happen if we're not paying attention enough to people who might still think it's in the bag already. Which is the most powerful key to unfavourable differential turnout this year when the polls show the SNP doing less well than anyone anticipated just weeks ago. That's the reason why, even without looking at differential turnout scenarios, the SNP must invest in a massive GOTV drive and aim for a much larger number of votes than in 2017. Aiming for a return of all 2015 voters is probably over-ambitious, but there is no reason why the sky shouldn't be the limit. Or is there?

Now what about IndyRef2020?

As they say every shitestorm has a silver lining and the Panelbase poll is no exception. They polled voting intentions for the next Independence referendum and found 45.5% Yes, 47.3% No and 7.2% who don't know or wouldn't vote. Which translates into a neat 49% Yes to 51% No once you've deported the dontknowdontcarers to Penrith, so statistically as much of a tie as earlier polls that went 50-50 or 51-49. This last result is totally in line with the trend of Independence polls since September 2014, that shows increased support over the last two years after a noticeable slump in 2017. But we're not yet past the hurdle though we probably would be by now if the SNP had not totally fucked up the issue during the 2017 GE campaign. Now this campaign is offering another golden opportunity to make the case and it should not be missed. Obviously the SNP understand this as they have again propelled Independence at the top of their list of talking points. Honestly I don't think we will have IndyRef2 on Nicola Sturgeon's timetable, that is next year, but there is a real chance we'll have it soon after the next Holyrood election if we play all our cards cleverly in the meantime. And naw I don't mean the way Tory James would, we're better than that, aren't we?

The weighted average of the three most recent Independence polls is just as clear as the overall trend. A Yes-No tie that could go either way when you factor in the margin of error. Now we wouldn't want IndyRef2 delivering 47% Yes, or would we? Sure that would be better than 2014 but would turn any further attempt into a once-in-seventeen-generations thing. So some steps have to be taken first. Not coincidentally ICM included a question about the Independence referendum in their last voting intentions poll, because they think it has become a major issue in the present campaign. 40% of respondents GB-wide support having IndyRef2 and 42% oppose it, with 18% undecided. Which is kind of interesting as it shows England is not radically against the idea but borderline irrelevant. Most importantly 49% of Scottish respondents support it and 46% oppose it with only 5% undecided. This once again kills the Unionist talking points about 'no appetite', in case they actually care and are not stuck in a Groundhog Day of denial. And in case Jeremy Corbyn still finds it convenient to procrasturbate on the issue, he should know that 56% of Labour voters support IndyRef2 with only 28% opposed and 17% undecided. But of course all this matters only if the triple-lock mandate is secured. Step One: an undeniable success at the Christmas Shopping Spree Election, an in case you haven't noticed, this could be harder than expected. Step Two: Both Votes SNP and a SNP majority of seats at the next Holyrood election, so we won't have to worry about the Little Green Men's next backstabbing. Leafleting, canvassing and GOTV. Plus Nicola on TV. And this will work.

Panelbase also explored other aspects of the Independence and Brexit debates. 37% of respondents think Independence would be a greater threat than Brexit for the Scottish economy and 45% think Independence would offer a greater opportunity. Conversely 39% think that Brexit would pose a greater threat and 24% that it would offer a greater opportunity. Which leaves a high proportion of people who don't have an opinion either way but also offers an oven-ready talking point to the SNP for this campaign and others to come. Simply make the case on how much Brexit would hurt Scotland especially in the already most deprive areas and of course hammer it home in Tory-leaning areas in the North East in case they haven't realized yet how much they were betrayed by the party they support. Simultaneously stress how many new doors Independence would open especially with the opportunity to join/rejoin an existing customs union and/or single market, and keep a certain level of constructive ambiguity about whether it would be the EU or EFTA. Just in case you might want to convince the pro-Indy pro-SNP Leave voters that there is still life outside the EU, just outside, or wouldn't we want to make that case too? From where I stand, we should. But that's a story for another day, after we win.

And since I indulged in a bit of Runrigstalgia, did I ever tell you that I always felt there is definitely something of John Bonham in Iain Bayne? Aye, never mind. Next general update on Thursday E-14. Spoiler: won't look good for Labour.

Don't be afraid of anything, don't be afraid of anyone

Where are the frontiers? How do I get there?

There are no maps, there are no roads

Just you and me on these streets of gold

(Paul Kantner and Marty Balin, America, from KBC Band, 1986)

21/11/2019

Westminster Projection - E-21 Update

Snap Election E-21 and Brexit B-71 (or B-406 depending on your perspective)
236th anniversary of the first untethered hot air balloon flight, also Björk's 54th birthday and Voltaire's 325th

Where do we draw the line?
When do we say this is enough?
It's part of the problem that we still make jokes about them
One day we'll wake up and find that they make all the clothes we wear
Grow all the food we eat and own the land we live on
They control what we hear, what we see and what we know
And the real funny part will be when we wake up and discover
That we were awake the whole time and made jokes
(From Lou Grant, episode Mob, October 1978)

Better Decide Which Side You're On 🔊
© Tom Robinson, 1978

I recently watched First Among Equals during my breaks from pollspotting, the series broadcast in 1986 by Granada Television (now known as ITV Granada), based on Jeffrey Archer's 1984 book and which, believe it or not, I had never seen before. Some fun stuff in there like one of the fictional Commons constituencies being called 'Edinburgh Carlton', which makes you wonder whether Archer just misheard 'Calton' because of, ye ken, that pesky Scots accent, or was he just more familiar with luxury hotels than with the real world? The last episodes deal with a fictional 1991 General Election that ends with the Conservatives bagging 293 seats, Labour 292 and the Alliance (Archer wrote that before the Liberal Democrats became a real thing) 47. Which accounts for all 632 Great Britain seats as there was no room for other parties in the Archerverse, though the SNP is mentioned briefly earlier in the story, but quite not unexpectedly not shown in a good light. Archer wrote two endings, one for the British edition where the LibDems (oops, Alliance, for fuck's sake) support Labour and one for the American edition where they support the Conservatives. Granada filmed the two endings, which differ only in the very last minute of the very last episode, and broadcast the Lab-Lib ending in the UK. I don't know if the Con-Lib ending was broadcast anywhere at the time, but it's dutifully included on the DVDs. Kind of fun watching that in these troubled times and transposing it to 13 December when the key question might be 'What the fuck will PM Jo do?'.

In the real world, while Labour were considering clause-fiveing 'Sovietize Fitba' into their crackpot communist manifesto, we got our second Northern Ireland poll of the year, surely the last one before the election. This poll and the seat projection confirm major changes in voting patterns, predicting the end of the DUP-Sinn Féin duopoly delivered by the 2017 election. Everything points to a more fragmented representation. But it would be quite a different fragmentation from 2015, with the Alliance Party coming back with a vengeance after they lost their only ever seat back then. Interestingly the most recent poll shows that the cross-community Alliance Party have lost some ground within the Republican electorate but are still doing well with the Unionist electorate, so a lower predicted vote share would not significantly impact their future prospects. Current polling is also bad new for Sinn Féin who would lose long-time marginal Fermanagh and South Tyrone back to the UUP. Shifts within the Republican electorate would also see Foyle and South Down switch back to the SDLP. These had been SDLP strongholds since 1983 and 1987 respectively, until Sinn Féin gained both in 2017 with only tiny majorities. This can be interpreted as a drop in support for Sinn Féin's abstentionist stance, while the SDLP always took their seats, fight the election also on a pro-Unification and pro-European manifesto and appeal to basically the same electorate who might want to have their voice heard in Commons.

The projected breakdown of Northern Ireland's seats confirms that the traditional 'sectarian divide' has become irrelevant in many areas, including in Belfast which would see the most spectacular and significant changes with two DUP seats switching to the Alliance Party, but admittedly neither can be considered a DUP stronghold. The DUP could also suffer a major defeat in Belfast North, Deputy Leader Nigel Dodds' seat since 2001, where the SDLP, the Workers' Party and the Greens have chosen to stand down. In this case it is very likely to help Sinn Féin who missed gaining the seat by only 2,081 votes in 2017 while the combined SDLP-WP-Green vote was 3,062. Another upset could happen in North Down, Silvia Hermon's old seat, and grant the Alliance a third seat. Here the DUP are challenged for the Unionist vote by the UUP who did not stand in 2017. While the Greens, SDLP and Sinn Féin sit this one out and openly support the Alliance candidate. Also factor in that Sylvia Hermon's 41% vote share in 2017 is very unlikely to go to the DUP and it's easy to see they are no longer the favourites here and an Alliance gain has changed from a remote possibility to a very plausible outcome. So this election can plausibly open a wider range of possibilities than ever before, as shown in the chart of possible outcomes below, with even the possibility of a Republican plurality of seats.

Meanwhile the GB-wide trends are quite depressing. Obviously Labour expected the race to start getting tighter after the full-fledged campaign launches, as did the punditariat and commentariat and pretty much everyone outside the Conservative Party. But it's just not happening right now and there's nothing like a 2017ish closing of the gap in sight. What the plot of day-to-day polling shows is Labour still sailing the same path as 30 months ago while there has been a steady slight shift from the LibDems to the Conservatives, and even from Labour back to the LibDems over the last few days. This just continues the trend I already mentioned a week ago: right-wing LibDems voters, however oxymoronic this might sound, regrouping around Johnson as the sure way to keep Corbyn conclusively away from Whitehall Command Central. And I have a hunch it just comes naturally and they don't even pinch their nose at the thought of delivering the UK to a swarm of far-right incompetents hellbent only on allowing their already dosh-heavy tax-evading donors to line their pockets with the Brexit benefits only them will see.

A quick reversal of fortunes in Labour's direction would have been too good to be true, and admittedly it happened in 2017 only about two weeks before the election. But I have already explained why I think it will not happen at all this year, and I stick to it. The situation right now is actually worse for Labour than it was at the same point in the campaign back then, and the general mood makes a Labour recovery even more of an uphill battle now that it did then. But of course Corbyn has to be held to account over all sorts of allegations while Johnson and his minions are mostly left unchallenged when they lie through their teeth and can't even remember what actually is in their own parliamentary agenda. Then just remember this is the country where entitled royal benefit scroungers would still be revered as the Cornerstone of the Realm even if one of the dim-witted inbred Windsor sprogs admitted to have fucked underage girls at the house of a known paedophile ring organiser. Oi.... wait... one of them almost just did and I haven't noticed anything but mild outrage in the media outside The National and the Guardian's opinion pages. For fuck's sake some of the comments nearly made me feel sorry for Sweaty Ranty Andy and agree that his greatest crime is just being terminally daft. Though actually being a moron is no excuse for behaving like one. But one fine day soon the populace Jake Rees-Mogg so loves to despise ain't gonna take it no more, or so I feel entitled to hope.

My current Poll'O'Polls includes the last six, conducted between 14 and 19 November by six different pollsters (ComRes, YouGov, Ipsos Mori, Survation, Kantar, ICM). Super-sample size is 9,054 with a clean 1.00% theoretical margin of error. It predicts the Conservatives leading by 13%, up from 10.5% a week ago. Voting intentions in England, where all dreams of a progressive UK come to die, show the same trend, the Tory lead Doon Sooth being now up to 16% from 13% a week ago. In a way these results lend credibility to the punditariat's and commentariat's joint choir that the electorate is highly volatile and the election highly unpredictable. Then I could argue there is nothing as predictable as unpredictability and that any double-digit Tory lead pretty much paints the same picture as any other such lead, but the media are trapped in their self-engineered 2017 Syndrome: fear that polls will prove so massively wrong that the toss of a coin would have been a better predictor of the outcome. Part of the uncertainty is also on the MSM totally failing to do their job properly and allowing unadulterated cooshite to be a the heart of the campaign. Johnson has entangled himself in the most massive web of lies since Josef Goebbels and Donald Trump. The problem with lies is that they make your life harder as you have to remember which porkies you told whom and it does not help when the whoms are the complete ensemble cast of complaisant BBC and Sky News talk show hosts. Some day it will come back to bite him in the arse. Or not. My tenner is on 'Not' actually.

We have also had some fresh London polling (aye, lousy pun and not Tom Robinson, but couldn't resist) from Deltapoll, starting with three key constituencies: Finchley and Golders Green (Margaret Thatcher's seat in an earlier incarnation), Kensington (one of Labour's upset gains in 2017) and Wimbledon (one of the 100ish LibDem targets). Finchley and Kensington also happen to be the chosen landing sites for born-again Libdems Luciana Berger (former Friends of Israel MP for Liverpool Wavertree) and Sam Gyimah (former Friends of Cameron MP for East Surrey) respectively. Right now it looks like crash landing for both and surely Gyimah's row with sitting Maverick MP Emma Dent Coad won't really help. This does not really fit with past LibDem talking points supported by fancy bar-charted misrepresentation of earlier polls. The irony here is that potential LibDem voters are actually a step ahead of PM Jo and a whole block ahead of Willie Rennie as they have already thrown themselves into the Tories' welcoming arms long before Jo has been given the opportunity to cage the Yellow Bird in a dark blue ministerial car. London looked like the perfect playground for LibDems snatching away middle-class well-educated Remainers from Labour. But it does not work quite according to plan and LibDems look like they will end up as Tory enablers there as in many other places. Oi... wait.... and what if that was the plan right from the start? Wouldn't surprise me the least.

The last Deltapoll GB-wide survey also includes interesting crosstabs by category of constituencies. Their baseline is quite favourable to the Conservatives with the national vote split 45% Conservatives, 30% Labour, 11% LibDems and 6% Brexit Party. Then they found Labour-held marginals going 49-28-5-15, Tory held marginals 66-15-11-6, Labour safe seats 29-46-14-6 and Tory safe seats 51-27-10-5. Which is a theoretical approach as it still includes the Brexit Party standing in Tory-held seats, but nevertheless highly alarming for Labour as the still strong Brexit Party showing in their marginals definitely spells major disaster incoming. But now Jeremy Corbyn has found his magic wand and a way to make himself Clement Attlee 2.0, with his grand scheme to make a National Broadband Service the UK's next 'treasured institution' (his words, not mine), even more revered than the National Health Service. Nae kiddin' here, even Owen Jones spins it as part of Labour's 'Back To 1945' campaign arc. Then you have to wonder how they will sort out the Broadband For The Homeless part of the masterplan. Juist sayin'

Of course you would never expect current polling to deliver another hung Parliament and you would be right on. Nobody expects that when the Conservatives are roughly back to their 2017 result (GB-wide as English pollsters notoriously avoid Northern Ireland and leave polling there to the natives) and Labour still lag some 11% behind theirs. Ingredients for a hung Parliament are definitely not here anymore. So the day after Election Day is bound to be Labour's Pitch Black Friday, that's what you get when you hold an election on the eve of Friday The Thirteenth. Right now my model says we end up with a 74-seat Conservative majority, roughly back where we were three weeks ago before serious campaigning started. Other prognosticators concur though with the usual differences between algorithms, which deliver a Tory majority anywhere between 70 and 110 seats, with the average prediction being a solid 83-seat majority. Johnson would not need anybody's support to get his five-year lese on Number Ten. The only possible mitigating factor here is that all this polling happened before any party had released their manifesto, and hopefully all will before Election Day. Just being sarcastic here. What we know for sure is that PM Jo supports legalizing cannabis, and should probably extend this to anything she's on since the election was called. And she would build only three Trident U-boats instead of four, which would definitely make a huge difference between potentially nuking 6 billion people and nuking only 5 billion. Quite reassuring to see the LibDems have not lost all sense of humanism. Seriously.

So now we've had this not-that-much-expected debate between the two English party leaders, which failed to impress Nicola Sturgeon, and she definitely has a point here as it rated quite high on the yawn-factor scale and quite low on the originality scale. The real conclusion of the debate is actually that now we have to factcheck the factcheckers after the Conservatives pulled a new unexpected stunt. In this context, there is definitely a hilarious side to Labour's digital strategy targeting young voters on Snapchat as I suspect not many are there searching for political news. I fully expected Johnson to put weapons of mass destruction, the ones PM Jo loves so much, on the table to deal a devastating blow to Marxist Pacifist Appeaser Corbyn, but he seems to be content with Tory-cuddling daily fish-wrappers handling this. Surprisingly Corbyn did not push Johnson too hard on trustworthiness and personal integrity. His spads must have warned him against such questioning being depicted as below-the-belt blows, though this would have been the appropriate target area here. Now what I expect next is a real interview of Boris Johnson, that is one not broadcast by the BBC or Sky or printed in The Times. More of a genuine one touching on a more personal side beyond the political persona, the man beneath the clown. Like how it feels now he is the Prime Minister and sees less of his children.... oops, sorry.... meant fewer of his children, granted of course he has been briefed by MI5 on how many there actually are. And Dilyn doesn't count here.

Reactions to the debate are indeed quite satisfying for Corbyn. YouGov's instant poll calling it a draw is in itself a victory for Corbyn even if Johnson did not go into terminal meltdown. Labour will also get some satisfaction from Corbyn being considered the better performer especially on the NHS and non-Brexit-related issues, more trustworthy and more in touch with ordinary people. The question remains though whether all this will be enough to broadband him into Number Ten, and the instant answer is a resounding Naw as Johnson still outnumbers him roughly two-to-one on Prime Ministerialability, and aye that one is definitely not a word. Yet. Then I guess many would want to know how the First Minister of England will reconcile 1970s public spending levels with 1870s taxation levels, unless of course he expects an unlimited supply of fresh dosh from the magic money-trees along the Motorway leading to Elgin Avenue, which I've been told are aven better than the ones in Epping Forest and on Grantchester Meadows I mentioned earlier. Then voters might just wonder why should they mind when increased public spending is pretty much an instant bonus and only distant future generations will have to foot the bill for extravagant national debt. And don't even mention the mythical sense of responsibility, not in this campaign, not at a time when your main concern is how you gotta survive in a country gone mad amidst a world gone even madder. Then of course there's still hope when Labour's key clause-fived pledge is to repeal the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, which everybody thought had already been lethally nullified last month by creative use of its own loopholes. Aye, just being sarcastic. Again. But sarcasm is a truly efficient form of self-protection, or isn't it?

More seriously, the regional breakdown of projected seats also shows that Labour are again in a hazardous situation because they have again lost ground in the Northern Powerhouse heartlands, which supports the opinion that the Rump Brexit Party definitely hurts Labour and helps Tories in Leave marginals. The last two YouGov polls credit the Brexit Party with 0-1% in the South and 8-10% in the North where there are far fewer Tory incumbents. Which I take as a faithful representation of the actual voting patterns as YouGov changed their methodology and now prompt respondents only with the parties who actually stand in their constituency. And the impact of the residual Brexit Party candidacies is fairly obvious in the North and the Midlands. If I ware a Labour election consultant, which fortunately I'm not, I would strongly advise them to ask working class voters in deprived Northern Leave-voting constituencies to consider what have they got to lose under a Labour government and what they stand to gain under a Conservative government. And the obvious answer to both question would be 'fuck all'. Even those who would benefit from Johnson's bumblingly announced NIC cuts should be careful what they wish for as it again means depriving the whole welfare system of billions in much needed resources while also helping the already well-off more than those on low wages. That is if it ever actually happens. I also guess that even those among these voters who think Corbyn is not ready to become PM would admit Johnson isn't either despite his four months of paid internship.

Under current polling 110 seats would change hands, in the same league as 2015 (111 changes), 1880 (113) and 2010 (115). The balance of gains and losses and the cartography of transfers again scream blue murder for Labour. You could possibly argue such results would be less of a disaster than 2010 because Labour then lost 94 seats ad gained only 3. But you could also counter-argue that it would be far more of a disaster as Labour back then bagged some 40% of Commons seats and now they would bag only 30%, on roughly the same share of the popular vote and thanks to evolving voting patterns. Then of course this election will likely be compared to 1983, if only for the easy soundbite: one started Corbyn's carrer and the other one ended it. And also for the foreseeable consequences: Labour urged to dismiss an allegedly 'too radical' agenda because of an alleged surge for a centristish third party. Which was wrong then and is still wrong now. Labour should also learn from what happened in Scotland in 2017. What you need is not toning down your manifesto because it will only add to the confusion, what you need is to make it more radical and hope it will win back voters you lost because of your perceived weak-kneedness. Just ask Nicola Sturgeon, she learned the hard way.

The shift towards the Conservatives during the last week would also bring back a number of symbolic losses for Labour: Cardiff North, Gower, Battersea, Kensington, Glasgow North East, Bolsover, Canterbury, Great Grimsby, Sheffield Hallam, West Bromwich West,... Either long held seats that seemed to be Labour's forever or surprise gains from 2017 that proved Corbyn's unexpected talent as a campaigner. Admittedly some in the Labour Class of '17 were not the sharpest tools in the box, even with the bar already set pretty low by the Conservatives, and a couple of them even proved totally out of their depth and turned into unmitigated disasters repeatedly failing their constituents. But this kind of upset gains, and a few dozen on top, are just what Labour desperately need for a majority. Just consider that even the Speaker's seat, Chorley in Lancashire, would have been among Labour losses if he hadn't been elected Speaker. Most damaging for Labour would also be taking back only a few seats they won in 2017 and whose MPs had defected since. Not one Conservative or truly LibDem seat would be marginal enough to be gained by Labour this time. Remember that even William Hague managed to snatch a few seats from Labour in 2001...

On current polling 69 seats would rate as marginals, about the same number as last week though not the exact same seats. Again more Tory seats than Labour seats are in the danger zone, though that does not actually mean much when we have a solid Tory majority. Today's alternate scenarios don't look very promising as the Conservatives would bag a majority in every case. Bear in mind that these alternate projections amount to about a 3% swing against or towards the Tories. Just says how many additional votes Labour would need to have a fair shot at victory this time, something like one million, give or take. Then of course you can't succeed if you don't even try. Good luck with that to the born-again Socialist Party of England and Wales.

Now even the Lab Max scenario would deliver a Tory majority, but only by ten seats. Some pre-Johnson Tories might remember that John Major started the 51st Parliament in 1992 with a 21-seat majority and ended three seats short and needing support from the UUP. Then it would make sense for Johnson to seek some outside help, but not from Northern Ireland this time as these Loyalists are definitely way too fucked up even by contemporary Tory standards. Of course the obvious target would be Serial Squirrel Killer PM Jo, who would probably need far less time to answer a simple Yes-Or-No-To-Ministerial-Cars question than she needed to deny culling small loveable furry animals. So here we go with the Second Coalition, and anorakish historians will remind you that the first such named ended with Great Britain betraying her allies and signing a peace treaty with France that lasted even less than today's Parliaments. Not that the LibDems would betray anyone. That is, except their voters, of course.

There has been a disturbing trend recently in the Scottish subsamples of GB-wide polls, which I don't use in my predictions but nevertheless keep track of. The SNP might do less well than the real full Scottish polls predict while the Conservatives would do better. Of course we need further real Scottish polling before reaching a conclusion on this, but I ran simulations of what might happen if the Conservatives actually do much better than anticipated. I did not take the über-pessimistic view that the SNP vote might go down again to its 2017 level, so kept it on the 42% predicted by the last real Scottish poll from YouGov. Then I moved the Conservative vote from 20%, the lowerest plausible under current polling, to 42%, level with the SNP and admittedly implausibly high even in Jackass Carlaw's wildest wet dreams, but then it might be the ultimatest All Under Yoon Banner scenario. Of course this one won't happen anytime soon, but I surely don't rule out the Unionist vote switching from its current fragmentation to a highish level of coalescence (and aye, that is definitely a word). And the only ones who could be the receptacle are the Scottish Branch Office of the English Conservative and Unionist Party, aka Team Jackass for now. The results again prove that a big share of the vote is not enough per se, what matters even more is how you fare relative to the runner-up. This again points to turnout, and specifically differential turnout, being the key to the election. Every SNP vote is needed in every constituency so don't slouch on the couch chained to your Irn-Bru drip until the exit poll, or you forfeit your hard-fought-for democratic right to whine about the results.

I think we should be aware that a 42%-28% scenario is far from impossible, that is one where the Conservatives hold their 2017 votes while the SNP benefits from only a part of another massive Labour debacle. This one would cut the expected SNP gains by half from a currently predicted sixteen to only eight, and the Conservatives would lose only their two most vulnerable seats (Stirling and Gordon). I cautiously venture this is the kind of situation we must be ready to face on Election Night, with the Conservatives able to brag they are definitely the only solid protection for the Precious Union Of Equals against the radical separatists. Beyond a 30% vote share the Conservatives would start to gain seats from Labour, starting with Martin Whifield's seat East Lothian, who was a goner anyway but as an SNP gain, and then from the SNP, starting with Perth and North Perthshire and next Lanark and Hamilton East. I will spare you the gory details of the intermediate steps and go directly to the 42%-42% scenario, where the Conservatives would gain two seats from Labour (East Lothian, Edinburgh South), one from the LibDems (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) and eight from the SNP (Argyll and Bute, Central Ayrshire, Edinburgh North and Leith, Edinburgh South West, Lanark and Hamilton East, Linlithgow and East Falkirk, North Ayrshire and Arran, Perth and North Perthshire). Which the SNP would compensate in part with two gains from the LibDems (East Dunbartonshire, Edinburgh West) and five from Labour (Coatbridge Chryston and Bellshill, Glasgow North East, Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, Midlothian, Rutherglen and Hamilton East). The silver lining here would be the SNP still bagging a majority of seats, which was the Thatcherite definition of the mandate for Independence. Then today's Yoons wouldn't give a rat's fuck about that, or would they?

Now of course we also have quite a situation in Scotland, rooted in an acute case of collective idiocy and inflated egos, with the Scottish Greens fielding twenty-two vanity candidates (against three in 2017) including in several SNP-Unionist marginals, all in the name of ideological purity, the worst infection to hit homo sapiens since the Black Plague. Odds are they will lose twenty deposits at least, but they could also endanger SNP incumbents in Airdrie and Shotts, Dunfermline and West Fife, Edinburgh North and Leith, Edinburgh South West and Glasgow North. While also jeopardizing predicted SNP gains in Stirling, Coatbridge Chryston and Bellshill, Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. If the worst happens, and SNP either lose seats or fail to gain their easiest targets, there certainly will be lethal and highly deserved retaliation at the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, the most obvious fallout being a return to the 2011 voting patterns when we almost got 'Both Votes SNP' without even campaigning for it. Guess the Little Green Men will feel less uppity, cocky and feisty when they're reduced to two Holyrood seats while the SNP gain back an outright majority, and then Greens are left with fuck all influence on any piece of legislation. And of course their voice would count for fuck all too within the Yes Movement after they have proven themselves Unionist enablers and just a herd of sectarian shiteheads. Ceterum autem censo Unionem esse delendam, sed Viridi Caledonii etiam antehac.

I realized it's alright if the world is crazy
As long as I can keep my own little corner of the world sane
(The Good Fight, episode Day 471, 2018)