This is our latest forecast for the December 12th 2019 General Election in the UK.
The forecast below is our standard forecast. It is based on a General Election occuring on the day of the forecast.
What does your forecast show? – We show the mid point of our forecast for votes. We also show the most likely range of possible seats for each party.
What do you use for your forecast? – We use all the latest polling data, where available. We also look at the betting markets and other information to help guide our forecast. We calculate the interaction between the support for the parties on as local a level as statistically possible and then use this to run a Monte Carlo simulation of the election.
What has changed since the last forecast? – New poll data from YouGov is available. This is our first Nowcast using the full reconciled final candidate list.
What do you predict will happen in Seat X? What is the probability of Party Y having more votes than Z? – As we approach the election we reduce uncertainity in our model and are able to answer questions like this. Whilst we do not automatically publish a prediction for each seat, we can indicate a most likely outcome if required and also probabilities of victory for each candidate.
I want to ask a question / get in touch – Write a comment below to get in touch.
Key Features
The overall summary of our forecast is “Strong Conservative Victory”.
Our forecast shows a strong Conservative lead over Labour, leading to a strong working majority in the Commons. There is a signficant possibility that the majority will be in three figures. Whilst there is some evidence that support for Labour continues to increase slowly, there is the strong evidence that the Conservatives are increasing their share of the vote across the entire country.
In England we see a very strong performance for the Conservatives, especially in key target seats. By contrast, Liberal Democrat support continues to fall as they are squeezed by the two main parties. Whilst in their key target seats there is a strong performance (see for eg the recent constituency polls from Deltapoll), outside of these constituencies this may not be a very good election at all for Jo Swinson’s party.
The Brexit Party continue to drop in support across the country and even in Wales we see their support drop below 10%. Now we have full confirmation of where the Brexit Party will be standing, we can adjust our final vote percentage on that basis.
After a couple of weeks of falling polls, we now see evidence that Green Party support is stabilising.
In Scotland we continue to see good evidence that support for the SNP is falling with the Conservatives being the main benificiary of a coalescence of both anti-Independence and pro-Brexit voters. This effect is less accentuated in our nowcast today and our seat range now indicates gains from their 2017 position. Labour are in a strong third place above the Liberal Democrats, with an increased margin but the Liberal Democrats continue to have a clear lead over Labour in terms of seats.
Wales continues to be a statistical deadheat between the Conservatives and Labour with our seat ranges for both parties being practically identical (though the Conservatives continue to maintain a small vote lead). We await eagerly the next YouGov large survey of Wales which has been out of kilter with all the subsamples of the other polling firms (including YouGov’s own Welsh / Midlands subsamples) to see whether there is further confirmation of this trend.
In London we see the only region with the possibility of gains for Labour and this is the only part of the country where there are doing fairly well against the Conservatives in comparison to the 2017 results. Liberal Democrat performance outside their target seats continues to be weak.
Our Northern Ireland forecast is updated based on a new poll from Lucid Talk.
UK Forecast
| Party | % Vote | Forecast | Change on 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservatives | 44.4% | 386 – 389 | +69 to +72 |
| Labour | 30.5% | 179 – 182 | -93 to 90 |
| SNP | 3.2% | 40 – 43 | +5 to +8 |
| Liberal Democrats | 13.3% | 13 – 22 | +1 to +10 |
| Brexit Party | 2.4% | 0 | |
| Plaid Cymru | 0.4% | 2 – 4 | -2 to 0 |
| Green | 3.3% | 0 – 2 | -1 to +1 |
| Independent | 0 – 2 | ||
| Speaker | 1 | – | |
| Northern Ireland | 18 |
Most likely result – Conservative Majority
Scotland
| Party | % Vote | Forecast | Change on 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SNP | 38.3% | 40 – 43 | +5 to +8 |
| Conservatives | 28.5% | 10 – 13 | -3 to 0 |
| Liberal Democrats | 14.3% | 3 – 6 | -1 to +2 |
| Labour | 17.3% | 0 – 3 | -7 to -4 |
| Greens | 1.1% | ||
| Brexit Party | 0.6% |
Most Likely Result – SNP Majority of Seats
Wales
| Party | % Vote | Forecast | Changes on 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | 35.1% | 17 – 20 | -11 to -8 |
| Conservatives | 38.6% | 16 – 19 | +8 to +11 |
| Plaid Cymru | 8.0% | 2 – 4 | -2 to 0 |
| Liberal Democrats | 9.6% | 0 – 2 | 0 to +2 |
| Brexit Party | 7.9% | ||
| Greens | 0.8% |
Most Likely Result – Labour Plurality of Seats
London
| Party | % Vote | Forecast | Changes on 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | 41.9% | 43 – 46 | -4 to -1 |
| Conservatives | 33.7% | 23 – 25 | +2 to +4 |
| Liberal Democrats | 17.6% | 3 – 6 | 0 to +3 |
| Greens | 5.1% | ||
| Brexit Party | 1.6% |
We expect three Change UK / TIG seats in London to be lost
Most Likely Result – Labour Majority of Seats
Northern Ireland
| Party | % Vote | Forecast | Changes on 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|
| DUP | 28.0% | 7 – 10 | -3 to 0 |
| Sinn Fein | 24.0% | 3 – 6 | -4 to -1 |
| SDLP | 15.0% | 1 – 4 | +1 to +4 |
| Alliance | 19.4% | 0 – 2 | 0 to +2 |
| UUP | 9.0% | 0 – 2 | 0 to +2 |
| Independent | 0 – 2 | – |
Most Likely Result – DUP Plurality