This is our latest forecast for the December 12th 2019 General Election in the UK.
Important – This is a FORWARDCAST for this election, predicting the result of the election on the 12th, rather than the result of an election 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 polling from Survation and BMG
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 “Conservative Victory with good chance of landslide”.
Our forecast shows a Conservative lead over Labour, leading to a large working majority in the Commons. Due to improvements in the Conservative postion over the past few days, we now believe that this majority may be into three figures.
In England we continue to see a strong performance for the Conservatives, especially in key target seats. Liberal Democrat support after appearing to rise again is now falling. Labour support now appears to have peaked and we forecast a poor performance compared to 2017.
The Green Party has a clear lead over the Brexit Party in vote share, but we do not expect them to win any other seats apart from Brighton Pavilion which is very secure.
The Brexit Party continues to show extremely poor polling across the entire country. Now we have full confirmation of where the Brexit Party will be standing, we can adjust our final vote percentage on that basis. The overwhelming majority of Leave sentiment is now expressing a vote preference for the Conservatives and at this point we have high confidence that the Brexit Party will not be a significant force on December the 12th.
In Scotland we continue to see evidence that Remain and Leave support is coalescing around the SNP and the Conservatives repectively. We expect to see the SNP winning around 46 seats – an improvement from 2017 but nowhere near the success of 2015. Labour is now falling back again. The Conservatives will see modest losses, but will be in a clear second place in seats and votes.
Our Wales forecast is the weakest of all our regional positions. We have high confidence that the Conservatives will do very well on Thursday and will come close to challening Labour for first place in both seats and votes. We also have confidence that the Liberal Democrats will do badly.
A large area of uncertainty lies around the exact level of support for Plaid Cymru. There is polling evidence that PC support is being squeezed heavily in the Tory / Labour, Leave vs Remain battle. Just how far this squeeze will go is uncertain. We look for new polling in the next few days to help us firm up this forecast, especially the last YouGov Welsh Monitor poll.
In London we expect Labour to see a dramatic fall in votes but end up with roughly the same number of seats. The Conservatives will retain their vote share and may increase by a few seats. If the Conservatives can squeeze the Brexit Party vote in London then they may have more of an impact on the Labour position.
Our Northern Ireland forecast is based the latest poll from Lucid Talk.
UK Forecast
| Party | % Vote | Forecast | Change on 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservatives | 43.8% (+1.5%) | 378 – 384 | +61 to +67 |
| Labour | 30.1% (-9.9%) | 181 – 184 | -81 to -78 |
| SNP | 3.6% (+0.6%) | 45 – 47 | +10 to +12 |
| Liberal Democrats | 13.2% (+5.8%) | 17 – 20 | +5 to +8 |
| Brexit Party | 3.1% | 0 | |
| Plaid Cymru | 0.4% (-0.2%) | 1 – 3 | -3 to -1 |
| Green | 2.9% (+1.3%) | 0 – 1 | -1 to 0 |
| Independent | 0 – 1 | ||
| Speaker | 1 | – | |
| Northern Ireland | 18 |
Most likely result – Conservative Majority
Scotland
| Party | % Vote | Forecast | Change on 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SNP | 43.4% (+6.5%) | 45 – 47 | +10 to +12 |
| Conservatives | 26.8% (-1.8%) | 6 – 9 | -7 to -4 |
| Liberal Democrats | 11.8% (+5.0%) | 3 – 6 | -1 to +2 |
| Labour | 16.5% (-10.6%) | 0 – 2 | -7 to -5 |
| Greens | 0.6% (+0.4%) | ||
| Brexit Party | 0.9% |
Most Likely Result – SNP Majority of Seats
Wales
| Party | % Vote | Forecast | Changes on 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | 41.6% (-7.4%) | 19 – 25 | -9 to -5 |
| Conservatives | 38.7% (+5.1%) | 12 – 18 | +4 to +10 |
| Plaid Cymru | 7.5% (-2.9%) | 1 – 3 | -3 to -1 |
| Liberal Democrats | 4.8% (+0.3%) | 0 – 2 | 0 to +2 |
| Brexit Party | 6.8% | ||
| Greens | 0.6% (+0.3%) |
Most Likely Result – Labour Majority of Seats
London
| Party | % Vote | Forecast | Changes on 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | 42.3% (-13.2%) | 42 – 45 | -4 to -1 |
| Conservatives | 33.6% (+0.5%) | 24 – 27 | +3 to +6 |
| Liberal Democrats | 15.9% (+7.1%) | 3 – 5 | 0 to +2 |
| Greens | 4.4% (+2.6%) | ||
| Brexit Party | 3.4% |
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 | 28.4% | 6 – 9 | -4 to -1 |
| Sinn Fein | 23.6% | 3 – 6 | -4 to -1 |
| Alliance | 23.2% | 2 – 4 | +2 to +4 |
| SDLP | 14.6% | 1 – 3 | +1 to +3 |
| UUP | 9.1% | 0 – 2 | 0 to +2 |
Most Likely Result – DUP Plurality
Hi Peter, does your forecast take into account the possibility that some people will vote tactically (eg someone who says he will vote LibDem, deciding to “lend” his vote to Lab to keep the Cons out in a particular seat), or does it assume that everyone will vote for his declared preference?
In short, yes (though the level of tactical voting is hard to estimate). It also modifies the expected swing depending on the Leave / Remain figures in the relevant seat.
It’s worth noting that most polls are now prompting for individual constituencies, so some tactical voting is already embedded in the tables.
Thanks for your prompt reply. 1 more question; do you have any figures for how the fact that the election is being fought on the old boundaries will affect the result? i read somewhere that the proposed (but not yet implemented) boundary changes would have been worth an additional 20 seats to the Cons (by making the no. of electors in each seat more equal) but I don’t know if that is true. Thanks.
I understand somewhere between 15 and 20 seats is what most people who have done estimates have come up with
Do you just average out the percentages from polls as they are in their final form or re-examine all the statistics from scratch?
From scratch. Each forecast takes a good hour of number extraction and data crunching.
Impressive!
Your seat projections for the Tories are higher (Labour lower) than most of the MRP polls and other seat by seat analyses. To what would you attribute this difference?
Different methodology! In 2017 I was typically lower but closer to the final result.