Predicting the 2017 UK General Election: Aftermath
This wrong. I was this wrong.
Some time ago, I made some specific predictions about the recent (at time of writing) UK General Election. Those predictions were made on April 23rd, 46 days before the election itself. I made said predictions assuming they’d all be wrong anyway.
Surprise! They mostly were. Here’s a summary:
Vote share: CON 42%, LAB 27%, LD 12%, UKIP 10%, SNP 5%, GRN 3%, OTH 1%
Seat changes: CON +25, LAB -30, LD +6, UKIP 0, SNP -1, GRN 0, OTH 0
Overall seats: CON 355, LAB 202, LD 15, UKIP 0, SNP 55, GRN 1, OTH 22
How wrong is this? Well, here’s the actual results, rounded where appropriate:
Vote share: CON 42%, LAB 40%, LD 7%, UKIP 2%, SNP 3%, GRN 2%, OTH 3%
Seat changes: CON -13, LAB +30, LD +4, UKIP 0, SNP -21, GRN 0, OTH 0
Overall seats: CON 318, LAB 262, LD 12, UKIP 0, SNP 34, GRN 1, OTH 22.
So the first question is, how wrong was I, during my scientific estimate/random guesswork, six and a half weeks out? The difference between result and prediction is as follows:
Vote share: CON 0%, LAB +13%, LD -5%, UKIP -8%, SNP -2%, GRN -1%, OTH +2%. Aggregate wrongness: 31%.
Seat changes: CON -38, LAB +60, LD -2, UKIP 0, SNP -20, GRN 0, OTH 0. Aggregate wrongness: 120.
(Overall seats identical to seat changes).
Now, the first thing to note is that there are arguably 14 discrete predictions being made here, and I got 4 of them right. 3 of these were the notion that little would happen in the UKIP, Green or Others seat totals; this all proved correct, but was probably easy to see coming. Outside of Brighton Pavilion, the Greens have struggled to achieve a breakthrough, and if it didn’t happen in 2015, then it wasn’t going to happen this time. The same is true of UKIP. And of course, most of the “Others” are the Northern Irish parties, isolated in their own sandbox.
No, the one thing I did get genuinely correct was the Conservative vote share. This was rooted in the idea that the polls would narrow, and they did. In fact, one end of the equation happened exactly as predicted: the Conservative vote tapered, but didn’t collapse.
What happened at the other end, however, was crucial.
The collapse of the UKIP vote is well-documented. It was also — this coming prior to the local elections, when the stink of failure attached to them indelibly — the opposite of the slight return I was expecting. UKIP can insist that they are not dead as a party, but the truth is, their time has passed.
The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, more or less stayed still. Their efforts were more focused, and a result, they’ve achieved a return in the south and in Scotland, albeit at the cost of further losses in the Midlands and Wales. In the modern (i.e. post-1988) age of party politics, Labour has arguably been strongest when the Liberal Democrats have also been popular — because, as an ‘acceptable’ alternative in Tory-voting areas, they have often depleted Conservative numbers in areas unwinnable for Labour. The Lib Dems aren’t going anywhere — although this might be true in both senses of the term.
The SNP accounted for less than a tenth of my overall wrongness in vote share, and in fact, as much in seat changes, but it matters for the party. The SNP result, if anything, demonstrates that Scottish politics has truly become its own thing. From a Westminster perspective, the SNP has been a behemoth for two years, and ‘should’ continue for many years yet; but from a Scottish perspective, they’ve been the overwhelming force for a decade, and just as with the Thatcher and Blair governments, fatigue is setting in, or at least, a reversion to the mean.
And then there’s the party that needs its own section.
Labour
It’s easy to overlook the fact that Labour lost 6 seats in this election, counteracted by gains elsewhere. I mentioned above the strength of the Liberal Democrats in Scotland and the south, and how Lib Dem and Labour strength have historically co-existed, and sure enough, 4 of these losses occurred in the Midlands — 2 each in the West and East. Another 1 disappeared in the North-East, and 1 in the North-West.
As for gains, Labour gained at least one seat in every region of the country, and now require a 2.01% uniform swing to become the largest party in Parliament — hugely reduced from the 2015 situation. Important ground was gained even where seats weren’t.
But. As negative as this will inevitably sound, it’s still obvious why the Conservatives ended up with the most seats. A regional breakdown (below) shows exactly how the Conservatives have an advantage. Within Wales, London and north of the Midlands, Labour have 125 more seats than the Conservatives, and everywhere else, the gap is 180 seats in favour of the Conservatives.
But the Conservatives only have one region where they have less than a fifth of the seats available — the North East, i.e. the least valuable electorally. The same is true of Labour in four regions, Scotland, the East, the South West and South East. These regions are collectively worth 256 seats, and Labour has 29 of them. The Conservatives have 182 in these areas. A look at the election map overall shows that Labour has almost certainly maxed out the urban vote. The party is even closing in on Milton Keynes, whose high incomes and low density blur the lines between city and suburb.
And this is, on a campaigning level, where I still have my doubts about Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party under his leadership. A gain of 30+ seats is not to be sniffed at, but Labour are still about 90 gains away from having a convincing majority, as opposed to the flimsy power Theresa May has.
Winning a workable majority means cracking into the suburbs and perhaps even rural areas (above). It’s telling that Corbyn’s Labour achieved Blair-like voting numbers without Blair-like seats; the Corbyn coalition doesn’t stretch to coastal towns or rural areas.
It might simply be that the Conservatives aren’t weak enough yet; they did, after all, manage 42.4% of the vote. It could also be that Corbynism, such as it is, needs refinement from a leader who can articulate it better and hammer it into something more aerodynamic. It’ll almost certainly be clear which of these is true before 2022, at any rate.
