Some General Election Predictions

After yesterday’s by-elections, I’ve been looking at the different odds for the results of next years General Election, and for fun, I’m going to make some predictions. I am using the current odds as offered by Ladbrokes (other bookmakers are available). I’ll be staking £5 on each prediction (It’s for fun, so I’m not willing to lose my shirt).

1. Who will win most seats? alittleecon prediction: Labour @ 8/11

I just can’t seeing Labour doing worse than last time, and they don’t have to do much better to become the largest party on 8th May.

2. Majority betting. alittleecon prediction: No overall majority @ 11/10.

While I expect Labour to do better than last time, they will struggle to hold all the seats they have in Scotland, so I think a majority may be beyond them.

3. Labour seats. alittleecon prediction: Under 305.5 @ 10/11

As of now, Labour have 257 seats. They will almost certainly pick up seats, but more than 48? I’m not convinced.

4. Conservative seats. alittleecon prediction: Over 277.5 @ 10/11

As of now, the Tories have 303 seats. They will lose some to Labour and possibly a couple to UKIP, but I expect them to nick a couple off the Lib Dems, so think overall they will lose less than 26 seats.

5. Lib Dem seats. alittleecon prediction: Over 32.5 seats @ Evens

The Lib Dems currently have 56 seats. While they are currently polling in single digits, in the areas where they have MPs, they seem to be popular. There’s no doubt they will lose seats, but while some are predicting a bloodbath, I think they’ll manage to hang on in a surprising number of seats.

6. UKIP seat totals. alittleecon prediction: Over 4.5 seats @ 11/8

I was tempted to go for over 9.5 seats at 3/1, but I’m fairly confident they’ll win at least 5 seats. We’ve seen Douglas Carswell win today, and there seems a good chance Mark Reckless will make it two shortly. It seems fairly certain Farage will win, and they must have a good chance in some parts of the North like Lincolnshire and on the east coast.

7. SNP seat bands. alittleecon prediction: 16-20 seats @ 10/1

This is a long shot, but after 45% of Scots voting yes in the referendum and SNP membership trebling to over 75,000 since then, there must be a good chance of them winning a significant number of seats from both the Lib Dems and Labour. They have 6 seats now and I think it’s possible they could treble that, which would hobble Labour’s chances of a majority in Westminster.

8. Greens to win a seat. alittleecon prediction: Yes @ 5/6

I think Caroline Lucas is popular enough in Brighton to be reelected, so yes is the call.

Here’s my prediction for the number of seats each party will have on 8th May 2015 (excluding NI as I know nothing about NI politics):

Labour: 293

Conservative: 279

Lib Dems: 34

SNP: 16

UKIP: 6

Plaid Cymru: 3

Greens: 1

Hopefully my maths are right (18 NI MPs). I’m assuming that Labour will put up a decent candidate against George Galloway in Bradford West (this is by no means guaranteed!).

So 8 £5 bets and an overall seats prediction. We’ll see how wrong I am next May! Interested in your predictions if you want to share them. How much will I win/lose?