Seat Projections – a joyfully fruitless exercise
Regular readers will know I have something of a habit of saying that trying to work out how many seats a party will win based on polling is a bit of a fruitless exercise. But ill informed idle speculation is what blogs are for...
So here is number 6 in the ‘Just a bit of fun’ series.
According to politicalbetting.com there have been 13 UK wide polls in the last 14 days. If we were to take a rough average of the results its would indicate...
42% Conservative
28% Labour
18% LibDem
12% Other
650 MP berths to fill...
Northern Ireland
There are 18 MPs to be allocated here and there does seem to have been a few shifts in politics there to speculate on seats changing hands. So my projection as things stand would be –
5 – SF
5 – DUP
4 – Ulster Conservative
2 – Traditional Unionist Voice
2 – SDLP
Leaving 632 berths.
Wales
40 Welsh MPs. Based on the aggregated poll and some polling data from Welsh subsamples I`d put that as -
13 - Labour
10 – PC
9 - Conservative
7 - LD
1 - Indy
Leaving 592 berths.
Scotland
Has 59 MPs. Again based on the aggregated poll and other recent Scottish specific data -
23 – SNP
22 – Labour
8 – LD
6 – Conservative
Leaving 533 berths to fill.
England
Again, based on the aggregated poll I would project that England would be roughly made up of –
310 – Conservative
181 – Labour
34 – Lib Dem
2 – Indy
1 – Speaker
So overall that would give –
329 - Conservative
216 - Labour
49 - Lib Dem
33 - SNP/PC
5 - SF
5 - DUP
3 - Ind
2 - TUV
2 – SDLP
1 – Speaker
So we would have a Conservative Government of 329 and an opposition of 320. Take out SF and 3 deputy speakers (assuming 2 Labour and 1 Conservative) would amount to 328 Conservatives to 313 opposition.
A working majority of just 15.
If this was to be how things played out I suspect we’d be getting another election within a year or two from Cameron trying to beef up his majority.
2 viewpoints:
On that basis, and it sounds feasible, Mr Salmond's aim of having a 'Nat bloc' to exert pressure on the UK government doesn't sound too far-fetched. A majority of around 15 isn't too far off a hung parliament, and a PC/SNP group in the 30's could be a very powerful weapon against a potentially very anglocentric Tory government.
6 Tory seats in Scotland tho, bit of a long-shot methinks. They could still fit in one taxi, but it would have to one o' thae big modern ones.
If your predictions turn out to be anywhere near the mark, then we really are in for a bit of fun.
If the SNP get more UK Parliamentary seats than Labour then all things, including independence, become possible.
Of course even with only a 15 seat majority, Cameron would have no need to "dance to a Scottish jig" or be "hung by a Scottish rope".
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