Jeremy's Den: Westminster Projection

Snap Winter Election E-7 and also Snap Autumn Election E-7
15th Anniversary of the Civil Partnership Act coming into effect and Sajid Javid's 50th birthday

Seven Days 🔊
© Bob Dylan, 1975

One week left before the Election Of Two Seasons, the one set in both the Astrological Autumn and the Meteorological Winter, whichever suits the punditariat best to explain low turnout or high turnout, predictability or unpredictability. Only certainty so far is that 76 MPs elected in 2017 will not be re-elected because.... aye, you guessed right... they decided not to stand this time. Which is not a record even if only 31 stood down in 2017, but 90 did in 2015 and a massive 148 in 2010. Among recent campaign developments we have Labour deciding to focus on Leave voters in the North and Midlands. Which sounds like a good idea as Labour are definitely not in good shape north of the infamous Mersey-To-Humber Red Wall. The Eastern end of the Wall looks shaky with Great Grimsby, a Labour seat since 1945, predicted by a dedicated constituency poll to switch on a 10% swing from Labour to the Conservatives and neighbouring Scunthorpe, a Labour seat since 1987 which they held on an outright majority in 2017, now projected as an ultra-marginal that could go either way by 600ish votes. The Western end in Merseyside looks more solid but only thanks to a number of deep Labour sinkholes there. Quite revealingly Southport, the only Tory seat in the area in 2017, has switched from a close Con-Lab battleground to a Con-Lib marginal.

The voting intentions in the five regions, as predicted by a recent Survation poll, confirm a massive Labour slump compared to the 2017 results. Interestingly this generally benefits the LibDems more than the Conservatives, with also a strong residual Brexit Party vote in the North. Which is the most dangerous combination for Labour: core Remainers switching to the LibDems while the New Model Blackshirts still bag a sizeable part of the Leave voters. Adding insult to injury, Survation's sample of 3,082 also rate Johnson higher than Corbyn on the PMability scale by 46% to 30%. In a three-way race Johnson gets 44%, Corbyn 25% and Swinson 13%. YouGov have delivered much better news for Labour, this time from London with a new full-scale poll of the Imperial Capital that has Labour on 47%, Conservatives on 30% and LibDems on 15%. This amounts to a 6% swing from LibDems and Greens to Labour since the last similar poll a month ago, with Labour now projected to hold 48 London seats, only one down on the 2017 result when earlier polling had them seven seats down. Not coincidentally, most of the polling here happened after the London Bridge terrorist murders and part of it after Boris Johnson's appearance on the Andrew Marr Show, so I can't help seeing the results also as a reflection on how Sadiq Khan, Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson handled the aftermath of the attack. Meanwhile the overall trend of polls GB-wide remains fairly bad for Labour.

The Conservative vote may have reached a plateau probably because they have now exhausted the supply of Brexit Party votes who could switch back to their previous party of choice. The Brexit Party vote has now gone down almost to a similar level to UKIP in 2017 and their downfall after their peak vote in the wake of the European Parliament election has been noticeably faster than UKIP's after the 2016 referendum. Of course their recent slump is a direct fallout of them not standing in Tory constituencies as some polls predict their vote share could still be as high as 6% in constituencies where they stand. These seats being overwhelmingly held by Labour, it's easy to see how the New Model Blackshirts can seriously hurt Labour in a number of marginals and do Johnson's bidding there. As always there are some paradoxes in current polling. Those who say Labour is closing the gap are right, but those who say the Conservatives are consolidating their lead are right too. Just pick the pollster and poll that suit you, as over the last week we have anything from Conservatives leading by 7% and down to Conservatives leading by 15% and up. Polls will be polls.

All Along The Watchtower 🔊
© Bob Dylan, 1968

There has been a lot of speculation lately about a number of constituencies delivering upsets as they vote against the national trends, which I think is just another stunt from the punditariat to cover their asses whatever the actual election results are. Bear in mind that a number of constituencies always defy the national trends at every election or else we would never have Portillo Moments, or would we? Then what little constituency polling we have so far does not hint at a massive number of upsets. The only notable one would in fact be a non-upset: Labour holding Portsmouth South, one of their surprise gains in 2017, with an increased majority and some LibDem tactical voting to defeat the Tories there. This despite LibDems throwing the kitchen sink and the electric battle bus at the seat, and one of PM Jo's infamous bar charts claiming LibDems would come rushing at flank speed from third place and gain it. Then we have had The Guardian headlining that Dominic Raab could be unseated by the LibDems, which he certainly deserves given his global incompetence and the Foreign Office's dismal handling of the Harry Dunn case, but the actual poll has him leading by 5% so there's a bit of wishful thinking here, like in similar claims that Iain Duncan Smith could be unseated in Chingford and Woodford Green. Otherwise Tory Rebels David Gauke and Dominic Grieve would both lose their seats to official Conservative candidates, which comes as no surprise as party dropouts standing as independents very rarely win. So don't hold your breath, there is every chance the results will actually be quite close to the overall trends, like what we have in this week's Poll'O'Polls.

My current super-sample includes the six most recent polls, conducted between 28 November and 3 December by six different pollsters (YouGov, Deltapoll, Survation, ICM, Kantar, SavantaComRes). Super-sample size is 9,458 with a theoretical 1.01% margin of error, and show both Conservatives and Labour slightly up. But the Conservative voting intentions have on average risen a wee smitch more than Labour voting intentions. You might want to always see the bright side of life and believe that it gets worse before it gets better. But there are many cases where it gets worse before it gets worser. I don't really know which one to anticipate right now because, ye ken, this election is sooooo unpredictable. Or so the punditariat say. What polls say is that the Conservatives' lead GB-wide has gone up from 9% a week ago to 10% on current polling, while their lead in England outside London has gone up even more significantly from 11.5% to 13%. The Guardian have slightly different numbers, but they weight each poll equally, which effectively means there is no weighting by individual sample size, and their polling averages also include older data than mine.

We have reached this point in the campaign where Labour should actually do better and close the gap with the Conservatives if they want to end up with a 2017ish upset on Election Night. But the day-to-day plot of voting intentions does not show such a trend. Ironically the most recent data-points here (which are two days old as we don't have polls in real time) show all three main English parties roughly where they were in 2017 at the same point in the campaign. But Labour have underperformed over the last week and we don't have a conclusive Labour surge as was seen two years ago. And I venture this will last as long as the First Minister of England manages to play the media like a fiddle and avoids serious scrutiny. The Conservatives would be wrong to stop bullying media that don't agree to be turned into CCHQ's subservient useful idiots. It has worked wonderfully so far with Johnson avoiding all embarrassing questions and getting away with a stash of lies that goes bigger by the day. I have a hunch Johnson will finally agree to be interviewed by Andrew Neil but will manage to appear in a slot of his choosing and very late in the campaign, late enough to make sure even a major trainwreck will have no impact at all on the postal votes and as little impact as possible on the on-the-day votes. And will peddle another bunch of lies anyway because he can't help it, it's his nature.

Changing Of The Guards 🔊
© Bob Dylan, 1978

On current polling, my model predicts that the Conservatives would bag a 50-seat majority and Labour would again clear the 200-seat hurdle though still embarrassingly close to their 1983 result. Both parties would gain a few seats thanks to the LibDems entangled in a downward spiral. There is now a plausible scenario in which LibDems will bag fewer seats than they had on Dissolution Day and go through their own Groundhog 1983 Moment when the SDP-Lib Alliance lost half their incumbents, though conventional common wisdom still says they did well back then. Right now LibDems are predicted to lose all Red and Blue defectors' seats except South Cambridgeshire, Heidi Allen's old seat where she has now stood down, pretty much like 25 out of 30 SDP incumbents met an untimely demise in 1983. Jeremy Corbyn might remember that part of the story well as his own first election back then was that rare (and possibly unique) occurence of one new candidate defeating two incumbent MPs at the same time. See the Saga Of Islington North I told you in an earlier article some months ago.

Even in London, where the ABC1 Remainer vote once made seats like Bermondsey or Vauxhall look like sure gains, LibDems would gain only Richmond Park and would have Zac Goldsmith's abysmal record to thank for that. So perhaps PM Jo should now refrain from campaigning in rural areas that only the diesel battle-bus can reach and where squirrel huggers keep her at arm's length, and devote her time solely to urban areas within range of the electric battle-bus. If the LibDem vote falls further this could lead to a slight recovery for Labour, though I don't think they can do better now than a 2015ish result. This would work though only with the odd combination of potential LibDems voters defecting to support Remainer Labour MPs in Leave constituencies in the North and Midlands, and Remainer Labour MPs in Remain constituencies in the South. If I were a Labour spad I would advise Jeremy Corbyn to take a step back in such constituencies and send Keir Starmer to the frontline as he looks more able to convince Lab-To-Lib defectors to come back home on the pledge of a second EU referendum without simultaneously totally alienating Lab-Leave voters. Of course Vince Cable's strong support for the so called People's Vote, bundled with his merciless takedown of PM Jo's now brain-dead pledge to revoke Article 50, might also help Labour. Just sayin'

Eric Clapton with Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson

Going, Going, Gone 🔊
© Bob Dylan, 1973

On current polling 81 seats would change hands, again the same number as in 1900. But this is just the theoretical outcome and I have a hunch only 80 would actually switch, see more on this below. Did I mention already that 1900 was the first time Winston Churchill was elected, as MP for Oldham, the first of five seats he would represent? Then we all know Winston crossed the floor before the end of the term, served as a Liberal Minister in a position he had specifically requested, and then sailed on to become the most calamitous First Lord of the Admiralty of the whole 20th century. But I digress as my point here is that we definitely lack any kind of Churchillian rhetoric in the present campaign, even from Boris Johnson, though his talking points might well also be Powellian and Huxleyan at the same time, like in 'Rivers of blood, sweat and tears with my Brave New Deal'. Back to the electoral math, the balance of gains and losses and the cartography of switches are still quite bad for Labour, though marginally les than a week ago.

Labour is projected to lose eight members of the current Shadow Cabinet, including the two Scottish ones, Paul Sweeney and Lesley Laird. But that's just the basic math as recent developments mean that the SNP will not gain Laird's Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath after all as they are no longer standing there. This is obviously a very embarrassing situation for the SNP and I guess nobody will wager even one penny on Neale Hanvey winning as an independent. And even if he did that would be yet another embarrassment for the SNP as it again points to improper vetting of the candidates. The worst part is probably that Hanvey was elected to Fife Council for the Dunfermline Central ward in 2012 then lost his seat in 2017 and lost a by-election in Inverkeithing in 2018, ironically one that was triggered by Lesley Laird resigning from the Council after one full year double-jobbing as Councillor and MP. Which leads to the sadly unavoidable conclusion that the SNP's vetting was at fault already twice since Hanvey's now infamous Soros post. All things considered I have now downgraded the SNP to 44 seats and upgraded Scottish Labour to 2 seats. Unless of course we have a major upset there and Green candidate Scott Rutherford comes from nowhere to defeat Laird. Though I certainly wouldn't bet one penny on that either.

Simple Twist Of Fate 🔊
© Bob Dylan, 1974

Current polling would also deliver 69 marginal seats. Conservatives over-performing could take their majority up to 108 seats in their best case scenario. Then of course a further LibDem slump might take some of the 23 Lab-Con marginals out of the danger zone, but that would still deliver a Tory majority of possibly 70 to 80 seats. More than enough for Johnson to cruise to a No-Deal-Crashout by the end of next year, which remains the most likely outcome of the whole 'Get Brexit Done' march down Desolation Row.

As usual, scenarios where the Conservatives under-perform are more promising. A renewed Con-DUP pact would just scrape past the majority hurdle by a mere two seats, though this won't happen as long as the Custom-Booth-In-The-Middle-Of-The-Irish-Sea option remains on the table. So we're back to the usual Groundhog 2010 outcome. A revisited Con-Lib Coalition would bag a 48-seat majority here due to Sinn Féin bagging more seats here than on the direct projection. Though you again have to wonder what the real purpose of a Con-Lib government could be during the Brexit transition period. Unless of course Deputy PM Jo is delusional enough to think she could strongarm Johnson into holding a confirmatory referendum on the terms of the final Withdrawal Agreement, in the unlikely event one could be successfully negotiated before the end of June.

Revisited by Steve Howe and Jon Anderson

Predictor sites again flourish as they did in 2015 and 2017. Some old ones have vanished, some new ones have appeared and some pillars of the community have never interrupted service even outside election periods. Now you can even get on-the-fly seat projections from Forecast UK and Flavible, supposedly factoring in all the most recent polls, as well as regularly updated ones from Electoral Calculus. Or you can just read my blog, can't you? Anyway all prognosticators have agreed over the last ten days on a solid Conservative majority. The only question being: will it be massive like in 80ish seats, or more perilous like in 30ish seats? Just bear in mind though that a week before the 2017 election, projections were something like 360 Tory and 210 Labour seats, and even Britain Elects on Election Eve still predicted 353 Tories to 219 Labour. So there is still room for some surprising twists, though I still consider them far less likely this year. Time will tell and I would love to be proved wrong if that means Johnson fails to bag a majority or even enough seats for a minority government, however implausibly remote that last possibility might look.

You might want to look at today's projections through rosy glasses as Labour have after all virtually gained some seats since last week. Quite true but at this rate Labour would reach the credible threshold for a minority government in late January and bag a majority in mid-March. So their best hope remains to contain the Conservatives below 320 seats. Now many will argue a hung Parliament would be a better outcome as it would require Johnson to agree to some modicum of compromise after the election. But I don't see that happening either, quite the opposite in fact. I think it would make Johnson even more determined to fight on a hard line and again play the populist card. And then trigger another snap election within twelve months, now that the Fixed Term Parliaments Act has de facto been nullified already. It has happened in the past and there is no reason to believe it won't happen again. I have a definite feeling Tories already have that in mind as their Plan B for next year.

The saddest part is that Johnson will probably get his majority next week after all and that his disgusting electioneering of the London Bridge terrorist murders will probably help as millions are more than ready to take every bit of anti-Labour and more specifically anti-Corbyn smear as self-evident truth. Of course the BBC openly acting as CCHQ's very own Propagandastaffel is just another sign that something is deeply rotten in the Kingdom of England. As is the Prime Minister of England acting like a weird blend of Donald Trump, shamelessly lying without any remorse and bullying journalists who do not want to be his useful idiots, and Vladimir Putin, using the state media as channels for his own self-promotion and the protection of the entitled oligarchy's interests. What will happen after the election is stuff that will give your nightmares nightmares when the Lord of the Lies unleashes his wildest plans unfettered, with Labour left humptydumptyfied by their worst walloping in forty years. But of course we still have seven days to make that unhappen, or haven't we?

Cetero autem censeo… aye, I do repeat myself.... sometimes. Flash Update scheduled for Sunday E-4, three days and thirteen polls from now.

Let us not be driven by fear into an age of unreason
Remember we are not descended from fearful men
(Edward R. Murrow, American journalist, 1908-1965)

Jeremy's Den

05/12/2019

Westminster Projection - E-7 Update

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