What can we expect from tomorrow’s by-elections?
In this parliament, there have so far been six parliamentary by-elections on the British mainland, contested by all the major UK parties (the seventh, in Belfast West, I’ve chosen to ignore as no major UK parties competed). Soon, we’ll have the figures for another three in Manchester, Corby and Cardiff, but for now, what can we glean?
Averaging the data from the six by-elections, we get the following vote share changes:
Con: -10.0%
Lab: +4.0%
Lib Dem: -7.2%
Obviously there are big flaws in extrapolating this, for example George Galloway’s performance in Bradford is hardly something that could be expanded in a General Election campaign, but let’s do it anyway. Based on these numbers, a General Election on the same trends as the last two and a half years would give results of:
Con: 26.1%
Lab: 33.0%
Lib Dem: 15.8%
The trend, although not the numbers are broadly in line with current polling (ICM have C:33% L:41% LD:14%), likely dragged down by Bradford West. Let’s treat Bradford as inconsistent and just look at the previous five:
Con: -7.6%
Lab: +8.9%
Lib Dem: -7.2%
Again extrapolating this into a General Election:
Con: 28.5%
Lab: 37.9%
Lib Dem: 15.8%
This looks much more like what a General Election held tomorrow might look like. Of course, in the 2015 General Election, the national climate may look very different, a lot of things can happen over two and a half years. We can all look forward to tomorrow’s election results.
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