On Predictions for the 2024 General Election

[danieldwilliam]

I think the election result will be at the bad end of predictions for the Conservative Party and towards the good end of predictions for the Labour Party. My view has shifted on this in the last month or so and especially since the English local elections.
My seat prediction for the Tories is closer to 150 seats than 200 seats.
Reasons I think this.
1) The polling has shown a very consistent and high Labour lead for a long time. This is backed up by government approval and personal approval ratings for Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer.
2) There’s some evidence that tactical anti-Tory voting will be widespread and effective.
3) Reform supports appears to have held up and turned in to votes in an actual election. This was one of the bigger uncertainties for me. I’d expected many Reform supporters to end up voting Conservative but they appear not to have done at the local elections. I think, from that, fewer Reform supporters will vote Tory in the General Election than I was expecting. The Reform vote seems pretty widely and evenly distributed.
4) The large number of Tory MPs standing down. This is both a predictor and a cause of lost seats. As a predictor; Tory MPs are very likely to know what the situation is actually like. If they are leaving before they lose their seat that indicates that they know things are not going well. As a cause; there is an incumbency advantage but that is lost if the sitting MP, especially high profile ones, stand down.
5) The mood of the country (as far as I can tell from the limited view I have of it) seems to be resolutely that it is time for the Tories to be voted out and the harder and more thoroughly they are voted out the better. The people seem consistent about this.
6) The SNP seems to be struggling here in Scotland which means that the Labour Party and the Lib Dems will pick up a number of seats here that they perhaps might not have done with a more popular SNP.
7) The Labour vote seems to be pretty efficiently distributed at the moment. They look set to win many marginal seats with comfortable but not overwhelming majorities and where they are losing votes to the left that seems to be in seats in large urban centres where the Labour Party would otherwise have super-majorities.
So I think the Labour vote will broadly hold up, tactical voting will mean the Lib Dems will pick up more of the Tory-Lib-Dem marginals, Reform will split the Tory vote pretty consistently.
I think the Tories will be lucky to walk away from this election with 150 seats.

Comments

[andrewducker]

Agreed.

I suspect that the vast majority of seats where they'd lose votes to the left are ones which they would comfortably hold anyway.

(It looks like they will lose a couple of seats to their left, but will hold such a huge majority that it doesn't matter.

[danieldwilliam]

The Labour Party might lose a couple of seats to the left but I think, on balance, they probably won't. I think Caroline Lucas had a huge personal following in Brighton Pavilion and I think the Green Party of England and Wales' next target seat is Bristol Central which has Thangam Debbonaire, a Shadow Cabinet member, as candidate. Not convinced Galloway holds his seat in a general election or that Corbyn as an independent wins Islington North. He might.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, it's unclear whether they will. In any case unlikely to be significant enough to worry them.

[mountainkiss]

Polling currently suggesting Galloway goes, Corbyn stays.

[danieldwilliam]

I can probably live with that.

[andrewducker]

I'd definitely rather have it that way around.

[cmcmck]

Some of what the Tories are coming up with certainly suggests desperation!

[mountainkiss]

(8) The Conservative campaign appears to be a clusterfuck at a number of levels.

(9) Sunak does not have buy-in for the election timing and manifesto from MPs.

(10) CCHQ has not progressed as far in terms of selecting and scaffolding new candidates as it might be expected to have done given what is already known about the number of MPs standing down.

[andrewducker]

Yes. The lack of preparation for an election from the people responsible for choosing when the election is would be surprising if it wasn't for their general incompetence being really obvious over the last several years.

[danieldwilliam]

Chaos with Ed Miliband.

[andrewducker]

I didn't vote for it, but it sure does sound preferable to the last decade!

[danieldwilliam]

9 and 10 are probably unfixable now and absolutely won't help. I think both of those impact the ground campaign. A wise man once told me the ground campaign is probably worth 2% - so makes a difference in tight campaigns. It might make the difference between finishing on 175+ and finishing on sub 100 this time. Or perhaps a little less.

8, I broadly agree. It's started very badly. I don't think I've seen an election campaign start so badly but I think it could probably be fixed from here. I don't think it will be fixed. However several of the mis-steps are inside baseball mis-steps. Having Tory councillors planted in the audience won't excite many people. I think most English voters won't notice the oddity of asking a Welsh person if they were looking forward to the Euros and those that do notice mostly won't think it's that rude.

Whislt I think the National Service policy announcement is deeply flawed it might actually appeal to low information Tory voters who didn't spot that relevant defence minister saying they were not going to adopt National Service.

The one that sticks is the footage of Sunak standing in rain whilst Starmer is nice and dry inside. That's going to be the defining image of the campaign.

[mountainkiss]

I don't know what an inside baseball misstep is, but I don't think it's going to be fixed any time soon. There are three independent problems here: (1) Sunak makes appalling policy decisions (2) Sunak is a terrible campaigner (3) CCHQ is startlingly rubbish at its job.

(I'm very curious about why this last might be. It ought to be the sort of organisation that's good at what it does. Don't have any insight into this.)

[andrewducker]

I *think* that Levido (the Conservative election chief) has somehow not been involved in Sunak's decision to call an election, and he was expecting it to happen in November (as was I).

(He's apparently the one behind the Culture War strategy, which some think was him auditioning for a role in the upcoming US elections)

Some discussion of this here: https://x.com/marty_mcd/status/1795112141541834832

[mountainkiss]

It’s not just him though. He can’t have responsibility for candidate selection and he can’t be responsible for today’s leak.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, there seems to be multiple sets of incompetence going on.

But "The election specialists are preparing for November" would explain why candidate selection wasn't further along.

What was today's leak? I've seen so much incompetence over the last few days that I may have missed that one! (Or not registered it specifically as a leak)

[danieldwilliam]

I think it's becoming apparant that Sunak hasn't involved enough people and the right people in the planning of this campaign. They appear to be surprised.

I'm not sure why he hasn't involved them. I think either, he knew his prefered timing and it was July but he wanted to keep a secret from them for some reason or Sunak was bounced in to the timing by some other factor.

[andrewducker]

I still can't see what they are gaining by going now. Things aren't getting noticeably worse for the Conservatives, and they seem likely to lose very badly no matter what they do, so why not hold on to power for another 5-6 months?

Sunak was *just* able to say "Look, inflation has gotten less awful!" - and if that is going to filter through to people feeling better (which seems unlikely, but possible) then it's going to take months to do so.

So either something has happened in the background, or he's really massively incompetent in a way that makes no sense to us because it really does make no sense.

[danieldwilliam]

I agree with that. 3 months of lower inflation and a Bank of England rates cut might just save 50 Tory MP's (including the next best leader of the Conservative Party.

[mountainkiss]

Leak wasn’t quite the right term sorry, though it was leaked. The CCHQ email.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. I'm not sure there's a better word for "accidentally sending something externally that you didn't mean to, and makes you look awful", but you're right right that it isn't quite the right term.

But I totally agree that it makes them look awful.

[danieldwilliam]

Information Mishandling Event.

[danieldwilliam]

Inside Baseball = minutiae and detailed inner workings of a system that are only interesting to, or appreciated by, experts, insiders, and aficionado.

E.g. I don't think most punters will notice or care much about many of those mistakes. They might notice or care about the general air of incompetence it creates.

My guess on CCHQ is that it has suffered from a) the same hollowing out as the rest of the Conservative Party post Brexit b) many of them have been appointed by Johnson, Truss and Sunak who are not very good at their jobs c) Sunak specifically does not appear to have involved them in his plans for the election. I think it's becoming clear that they are as surprised as most other people at the timing.

[mountainkiss]

That sounds eminently plausible.