Jeremy's Den: An Dubhlachd Election

Christmas Shopping Spree Election Day
56th anniversary of Kenya's Independence and 4th anniversary of the Paris Agreement on climate change
Also Bill Nighy's 70th birthday and Will Carling's 54th

Big Day 🔊
© Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, 1975

So today is the big day, at least for the 3,322 candidates and their dogs and also my last attempt at making sense of this general election. The idea is to use only the on-the-day polls, which are in fact conducted on the last two or three days of the campaign and surface on social media on Election Eve or Election Day itself around 6AM. So this year we have six on-the-day polls in store. There were seven in 2017 and just one in 2015. But once again the big news is a brand new real Scottish poll, conducted by Survation on Tuesday and Wednesday. Before sharing its results, I have to remind you that Survation also published the very last full Scottish poll before the 2017 election. Back then it was the worst of twelve post-Dissolution Scottish polls for the SNP, but also the one closest to the actual result though it still overestimated the SNP and underestimated the Conservatives. So all things considered I'm inclined to trust this one anyway and it does paint a better picture for SNP than what we had yesterday, as you can see from the voting intentions and the possible distributions of seats. Fun part is that the Little Green Men are doing awfully poorly, 0.8% of the vote split between 22 candidates means 22 lost deposits. But they asked for it, didn't they?

I have also selected a sample of Scottish seats to watch tonight, which is purely arbitrary though you will find some here that have been mentioned in the media too. 22 seats are on my list, which might look a bit much, but that's what I think allows you to cover all the angles or the what-went-wrong and the what-went-right, and does not mean that what happens in the other 37 seats is irrelevant. There might be some upsets in these too, you never know. The vote shares in the table are my own projections, not even cross-checked with YouGov's MRP data. Text in bold dark red shows seats projected to change hands. Bold numbers on a solid background indicate the projected winner, while light backgrounds indicate the predicted runner-up.

I guess my list covers enough seats, and not just the main ones predicted to change hands, to assess who won the one-on-one fight between the Conservatives and the SNP, plus some juicy side stories. Will Glasgow definitely turn yellow or will a couple of red spots remain? Will the Tory tactical vote fail Ian Murray and make him vulnerable? Will John Nicolson stage a comeback in East Dunbartonshire... oops, sorry, meant Ochil and South Perthshire... just a slip of the tongue, wasn't it? Can the SNP actually unseat Jamie Stone and Christine Jardine, and why not Jo Swinson too? Could Labour do so badly that Martin Whitfield not only loses his seat but also finishes third behind the Conservatives? And how the fuck will the Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath bùrach end? You have my best answers in the table, not sure all will come true. But had to try anyway.

Just Another Day 🔊
© Brian Eno, Peter Schwalm, 2005

This day won't be remarkable for the couple of millions who have not registered to vote or the 25-30% who have but won't move their asses to the fucking polling place, hopefully fewer in Scotland than in England, as they will whine about the results first thing tomorrow anyway. Don't get too excited at the reports of strong early turnout as it was to be expected when the sun sets before teatime, and even just after lunch in some parts of Scotland if some of our MPs are to be believed. This might be the most important election in a generation but don't expect a record turnout as the last time it was officially above 70% was in 1997. The day-to-day plot of voting intentions is not that good for Labour when you compare it with what we had in 2017. There was indeed a Labour surge during the campaign but they underperformed most of the time while the Tories caught up with their 2017 vote over the last two weeks. So a 2017ish upset at 10PM is probably out of the realm of plausibility now.

The last Poll'O'Polls for this election reflects this. It includes the final six polls, conducted over the last three days by six different pollsters (BMG, Kantar, Deltapoll, Opinium, Panelbase and Survation). YouGov are conspicuously absent here but they probably decided they had nothing meaningful to say after they released their final MRP prediction on Tuesday. The final super-sample is 14,867 with a theoretical 0.80% margin of error as pollsters again went for bigger samples in the probably vain hope they would get better results than in 2017.

So we end up with the Conservatives leading by 10% over Labour, when the final 2017 estimate was a 7% lead and the actual result a 2.4% lead. But don't read too much into this. There is obviously still room for surprises before Huw Edwards takes the stage and the national average can't reflect all local situations as we have already seen quite often in earlier elections.

Here Come The Warm Jets 🔊
© Brian Eno, 1973

On the Last Day polling average my model predicts a 40-seat Tory majority. Which is pretty distressing but an improvement on what we had yesterday. The bizarre quirks of FPTP mean that the Tories have not just lost a handful of Scottish seats but also a handful of English seats as the tiny changes in the relative strength of parties here and there switched some marginals.

The other prognosticators have also published a final update to their predictions. They mostly also show a slight drop in the number of predicted Tory seats over the last week. What remains to be seen is whether the two MRP predictions will be more accurate than the rest as YouGov's was in 2017. One exit poll to go, please...

So the First Minister of England might find himself in a more precarious position than expected after the election. The many unknowns mean that he is probably closer to a 1992ish outcome than a 1983ish one and it did not end really well for John Major back then. Johnson may have eradicated one form of rebellion with his Stalinist purge of the last true Europhile One-Nationers but you never know where the next blow might come from. Could be from the ERG cultists when he totally fucks up the final Brexit Deal and ends up with some monstrosity that makes even Steve Baker throw up his jam-first scones. We'll know soon enough.

Taking Tiger Mountain 🔊
© Brian Eno, 1974

So this last update says we have 73 seats changing hands and 78 marginals. 73 changes is the same as what sealed Margaret Thatcher's victory in 1979 and her 43-seat majority back then also almost duplicates Johnson's predicted 40-seat majority. Quite an omen. Now let's have a last look at the full cartography of gains and losses and the alternate outcomes after redistribution of the marginals.

There's little change here from yesterday. A hung Parliament still remains a plausible result, but so does a 1983ish Conservative landslide. But the slightly reduced number of predicted Conservative seats in a hung Parliament opens the door to a new interesting option. A Labour-led Rainbow Min coalition (Greens-SNP-PC-SDLP-Lab) would bag 301 seats to Johnson's 306 so he could be ousted if the DUP chose to support Corbyn as they have hinted they might. Quite an interesting prospect even if it would be more likely to boil down to which brand of ministerial cars PM Jo likes best. As Always.

Less than three hours to go now until Huw Edwards reads out the exit poll and jaws drop to the floor. Or not. Only the punditariat's won't as they told us so, whatever the outcome, because this election was so unpredictable and we did tell you so, didn't we? Then we'll have the First Minister of England waffle-piffling his way through even his victory speech and promising he will uh.... get.... uh... Brexit... scoff... done, because that's the will of the seven people he met during the campaign. And Not-PM Jo will explain us why the LibDems did really well though they end up with fewer seats than on Dissolution Day and aye, she congratulates Amy Callaghan on her 2-vote victory and naw, she won't challenge the result in court and aye, she deeply regrets having massacred even more unsuspecting vowels than innocent squirrels during the campaign. Just before Keir Starmer comes out of hiding to read Jeremy Corbyn's resignation letter and farewell address.

But of course the worst part is that the First Minister of England will be in a position to go on pretending he is a leader. And we will be left wondering how the fuck he could get away with more lies than all other candidates since 1832 combined. The worst will be still to come obviously when the pretendy PM totally botches everything he touches and our only hope becomes that his corporate handlers will finally decide enough is enough and end up frankensteining a less buffoonish replacement. Might take years though and in the meantime he would have broken up the Precious Yoonion. Johnson as the best hope for Scottish Independence and Irish Reunification. Stranger things have happened.

But right now just brace yourselves for the Great Disturbance In The Farce at 10PM sharp when all prognosticators go FUUUUCK, those fucking pollsters fucked up AGAIN. Because, ye ken, energy fools the magician.

Marshall your forces, O great generals
The cost of victory exceeds the cost of defeat
(Andromeda, episode So Burn The Untamed Lands, 2004)

Jeremy's Den

12/12/2019

An Dubhlachd Election - E-Day Ambient Update

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