Jeremy's Den: Westminster Projection

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.

Up Against The Wall 🔊
© Tom Robinson, Roy Butterfield, 1978

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'

I'm All Right Jack 🔊
© Tom Robinson, 1978

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.

Bully For You 🔊
© Tom Robinson, Peter Gabriel, 1979

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)

Jeremy's Den

21/11/2019

Westminster Projection - E-21 Update

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