This article features a large widget showing the UK and who they project to win each constituency if there was an election now. Obviously I couldn’t copy and paste that. As a quick summary:
LAB: 316 MPs, up by 114
CON: 236 MPs, down by 129
SNP: 50 MPs, up by 2
LD: 23 MPs, up by 12
PC: 5 MPs, up by 1
GRN: 1 MP, no change
Majority requires 326 so hung parliament.
Labour could join with Lib Dems or with SNP to form a coalition government. Or a Northern Ireland party since they only need ten.
Conservative would need to join with **at least 3 other parties including the SNP** to form a government.
The changed seats are shown in brighter colours. Red wall restored?
Sorry that Orkney and Shetland got cut off. It shows them staying Lib Dem.
>In 2019 the Conservatives scored a big general election win, relegating the Labour party to one of its worst defeats in history. But if in an election was held today, such result would be reversed. Labour would be the largest party.
>Introducing Britain Predicts. Built by Ben Walker of Britain Elects, and Michael Goodier and Josh Rayman of the New Statesman, Britain Predicts turns poll shares into predicted seats in the House of Commons through a modified system of the strong transition model. Regularly reviewed and updated, the model is one of the more advanced daily predictors of a general election result.
>The model also features a calculator capacity. Enter your own poll shares to make your own predictions of how you think things will pan out. Use the slider or boxes to shift the levels of support to figures you think are right, and when you’re ready, click “calculate” to see what our model thinks would happen.
>Methodology
>An election calculator is not a flawless way to predict an election, but a number of those online today have form for getting the results roughly right.
>Britain Predicts recognises that the country doesn’t often vote or swing as one, and that there are people in some constituencies who are more susceptible to changing their vote than those living elsewhere.
>The engine of the calculator is based on the strong transition model (STM) of predicting UK elections, created by Martin Baxter of Electoral Calculus. The advantage of this model over the simple uniform national swing (UNS), which is often used elsewhere, is that parties with a declining vote share nationally cannot get negative votes in any particular seat, or gain votes to more than 100 per cent of the total. Parties that fall, say, four points nationally, won’t necessarily fall four points locally. Instead, they fall multiplicatively, with those losses split among the advancing parties in proportion to their national gains.
>Another modification the STM makes is dividing the parties up into strong and weak voters. Strong voters are less prone to shifting their support than weak voters. This means the model takes incumbency into account, as parties with large proportions of strong supporters in a seat will lose a smaller number of votes in that seat than under the standard model of UNS.
>The New Statesman’s model makes several amendments to the STM, however. Firstly, we recognise that weak voters can be reinterpreted as swing voters, and so rather than applying a uniform threshold of 20 per cent to split voters into strong and weak based on seat turnout, we have created separate thresholds for each party in each seat. This is based on British Election Study figures showing 29-35 per cent of voters chose a party different to the one that they had previously voted for at the most recent general election. We then adjust this threshold based on how much a party’s vote share has historically fluctuated in each seat, both at a parliamentary level and a local council level.
>We have also split the model up to treat Scotland and Wales separately, as they have single-nation parties (the SNP and Plaid Cymru).
>It is worth noting that this is a model, and like every model, it has its limitations and assumptions. We have chosen not to link the Reform Party to the Brexit Party vote of 2019. This is for several reasons. Firstly, the Brexit Party solely targeted seats that would work against the chances of anti-Brexit parties in 2019, but the Reform Party intends to stand across the UK (which means that, theoretically, Reform could decline in vote share but still pick up votes in more seats than the Brexit Party did in 2019). Secondly, the local election results of May 2021 showed a poor correlation between the Reform Party performance of 2021 and the Brexit Party performance of 2019. The choice to decouple the two parties can lead to some unusual results, such as Reform gaining seats in Scotland if they are given a high enough share.
>The decision also means that around 200 seats will have, in effect, “stranded voters”. These are people who voted for the Brexit Party in 2019 but will, theoretically, be mostly unmoved by model calculations. To solve this, we have sought to redistribute the Brexit Party vote to other parties based on how they would have voted had the Brexit Party not stood. This is based on polling of second preferences and post-election movement at the time. We have introduced this by default through a toggle in the visualisation. You can deselect this option if you would rather the Brexit Party vote be ignored.
>Another limitation to the model is that, presently, we do not account for tactical voting. Future iterations of the model, however, will accommodate for that.
>If polling changes in the weeks and months ahead, so too will our model by accounting for new information, such as where the Reform Party’s vote actually is, and how many weak (or swing) voters there are in certain seats. Tactical voting will be accounted for too once we can properly ascertain how willing voters from one party are to vote for another in today’s political climate. Past performance does not guarantee future returns.
A Lab Lib coalition would be excellent. Can we have this GE now and get rid of the populists destroying the country please?
Not the British public, that’s for sure.
Conservatives will win. Because peeps did not like that foot anyway. :/
Might be an unpopular opinion but I think this prediction leaves out the far right party of Reform and probably underestimates their impact on the election.
Conservatives are without a doubt losing a lot of votes but that does not necessarily mean these folks will go to Labour. The only viable alternative for them may very well be Reform.
I think it’s very likely that Reform will gain something. Best case just 1 seat, worse case 10 seats.
In polls before a GE and when talking to friends and family everyone says the way they would like to vote in an ideal world and based on the beliefs they think their party has historically stood for.
Then comes the ballot in the post and the party leaders name is not on it, your local MPs name is, that’s when you remember you are actually voting for your local representative and that’s when things change.
This person will be the one who makes changes in your area and will support you in your area. The PM probably is only vaguely aware your county exists, your MP is doing the heavy lifting where you live, they are fighting for increased budgets, increased Government investment. You can have a local Labour MP under a Conservative government and still be better off than if you had a Conservative local MP under a Conservative government. They might simply be better at their job in your area than the opposition.
Vote for your MP, not your PM.
If labour actually want to win, they need to drop softlad Kier
Labour and the Lib dems could easily get rid of Mogg from NE Somerset according to that if they worked together.
Probably loads of other places too but the map thing doesn’t work properly for me.
11 comments
This article features a large widget showing the UK and who they project to win each constituency if there was an election now. Obviously I couldn’t copy and paste that. As a quick summary:
LAB: 316 MPs, up by 114
CON: 236 MPs, down by 129
SNP: 50 MPs, up by 2
LD: 23 MPs, up by 12
PC: 5 MPs, up by 1
GRN: 1 MP, no change
Majority requires 326 so hung parliament.
Labour could join with Lib Dems or with SNP to form a coalition government. Or a Northern Ireland party since they only need ten.
Conservative would need to join with **at least 3 other parties including the SNP** to form a government.
**EDIT** [I have taken a screenshot of the predicted map if anyone’s interested.](https://i.imgur.com/EmSUa1Z.png)
The changed seats are shown in brighter colours. Red wall restored?
Sorry that Orkney and Shetland got cut off. It shows them staying Lib Dem.
>In 2019 the Conservatives scored a big general election win, relegating the Labour party to one of its worst defeats in history. But if in an election was held today, such result would be reversed. Labour would be the largest party.
>Introducing Britain Predicts. Built by Ben Walker of Britain Elects, and Michael Goodier and Josh Rayman of the New Statesman, Britain Predicts turns poll shares into predicted seats in the House of Commons through a modified system of the strong transition model. Regularly reviewed and updated, the model is one of the more advanced daily predictors of a general election result.
>The model also features a calculator capacity. Enter your own poll shares to make your own predictions of how you think things will pan out. Use the slider or boxes to shift the levels of support to figures you think are right, and when you’re ready, click “calculate” to see what our model thinks would happen.
>Methodology
>An election calculator is not a flawless way to predict an election, but a number of those online today have form for getting the results roughly right.
>Britain Predicts recognises that the country doesn’t often vote or swing as one, and that there are people in some constituencies who are more susceptible to changing their vote than those living elsewhere.
>The engine of the calculator is based on the strong transition model (STM) of predicting UK elections, created by Martin Baxter of Electoral Calculus. The advantage of this model over the simple uniform national swing (UNS), which is often used elsewhere, is that parties with a declining vote share nationally cannot get negative votes in any particular seat, or gain votes to more than 100 per cent of the total. Parties that fall, say, four points nationally, won’t necessarily fall four points locally. Instead, they fall multiplicatively, with those losses split among the advancing parties in proportion to their national gains.
>Another modification the STM makes is dividing the parties up into strong and weak voters. Strong voters are less prone to shifting their support than weak voters. This means the model takes incumbency into account, as parties with large proportions of strong supporters in a seat will lose a smaller number of votes in that seat than under the standard model of UNS.
>The New Statesman’s model makes several amendments to the STM, however. Firstly, we recognise that weak voters can be reinterpreted as swing voters, and so rather than applying a uniform threshold of 20 per cent to split voters into strong and weak based on seat turnout, we have created separate thresholds for each party in each seat. This is based on British Election Study figures showing 29-35 per cent of voters chose a party different to the one that they had previously voted for at the most recent general election. We then adjust this threshold based on how much a party’s vote share has historically fluctuated in each seat, both at a parliamentary level and a local council level.
>We have also split the model up to treat Scotland and Wales separately, as they have single-nation parties (the SNP and Plaid Cymru).
>It is worth noting that this is a model, and like every model, it has its limitations and assumptions. We have chosen not to link the Reform Party to the Brexit Party vote of 2019. This is for several reasons. Firstly, the Brexit Party solely targeted seats that would work against the chances of anti-Brexit parties in 2019, but the Reform Party intends to stand across the UK (which means that, theoretically, Reform could decline in vote share but still pick up votes in more seats than the Brexit Party did in 2019). Secondly, the local election results of May 2021 showed a poor correlation between the Reform Party performance of 2021 and the Brexit Party performance of 2019. The choice to decouple the two parties can lead to some unusual results, such as Reform gaining seats in Scotland if they are given a high enough share.
>The decision also means that around 200 seats will have, in effect, “stranded voters”. These are people who voted for the Brexit Party in 2019 but will, theoretically, be mostly unmoved by model calculations. To solve this, we have sought to redistribute the Brexit Party vote to other parties based on how they would have voted had the Brexit Party not stood. This is based on polling of second preferences and post-election movement at the time. We have introduced this by default through a toggle in the visualisation. You can deselect this option if you would rather the Brexit Party vote be ignored.
>Another limitation to the model is that, presently, we do not account for tactical voting. Future iterations of the model, however, will accommodate for that.
>If polling changes in the weeks and months ahead, so too will our model by accounting for new information, such as where the Reform Party’s vote actually is, and how many weak (or swing) voters there are in certain seats. Tactical voting will be accounted for too once we can properly ascertain how willing voters from one party are to vote for another in today’s political climate. Past performance does not guarantee future returns.
>Model queries can be directed to Ben Walker on ben.walker@newstatesman.co.uk
A Lab Lib coalition would be excellent. Can we have this GE now and get rid of the populists destroying the country please?
Not the British public, that’s for sure.
Conservatives will win. Because peeps did not like that foot anyway. :/
Might be an unpopular opinion but I think this prediction leaves out the far right party of Reform and probably underestimates their impact on the election.
Conservatives are without a doubt losing a lot of votes but that does not necessarily mean these folks will go to Labour. The only viable alternative for them may very well be Reform.
I think it’s very likely that Reform will gain something. Best case just 1 seat, worse case 10 seats.
In polls before a GE and when talking to friends and family everyone says the way they would like to vote in an ideal world and based on the beliefs they think their party has historically stood for.
Then comes the ballot in the post and the party leaders name is not on it, your local MPs name is, that’s when you remember you are actually voting for your local representative and that’s when things change.
This person will be the one who makes changes in your area and will support you in your area. The PM probably is only vaguely aware your county exists, your MP is doing the heavy lifting where you live, they are fighting for increased budgets, increased Government investment. You can have a local Labour MP under a Conservative government and still be better off than if you had a Conservative local MP under a Conservative government. They might simply be better at their job in your area than the opposition.
Vote for your MP, not your PM.
If labour actually want to win, they need to drop softlad Kier
Labour and the Lib dems could easily get rid of Mogg from NE Somerset according to that if they worked together.
Probably loads of other places too but the map thing doesn’t work properly for me.
Why is NI not included?
The rich
Link to [non-paywalled version](https://web.archive.org/web/20220720220754/https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2022/06/britainpredicts/).