Swing seats: the General Election of 2015

Lewis Baston

For Westbourne Communications, January 2015

A new environment

Electoral change since 2010

New features of the 2015 election

Post coalition

Lib Dems unpopular

Rise of UKIP

Rise of SNP

Rise of Greens?

Things that might have changed but didn’t

Same boundaries

Same voting system

Probably same low turnout

TV debates?First term

opposition is difficult

The half-empty stadium

The decline of major party politics

Two main parties have lost…

VotesMembers/

place in society

Loyalty

Ideology/ confidence

Nationwide appeal

1951 2010

The electorate 1951 and 2010

2010 2015?

And on to 2015?

Some comforting certainties

The safe seats

The majority of individual seats are easy to predict

Safe seats

Big majoritiesNot threatened

by swing or local factors

Often demographic

outliers

Long serving MP

Complacency and poor

organisation

Nomination usually equals

election

A new generation in safe seats

Con Labour Lib Dem Others

Safe seats with

retirements22 24 2 1

Women retiring 1 7 0 0

New women

candidates7 (2 TBA) 13 (4 TBA) 1 1

New BAME

candidates5 0 0 0

Conservative Labour

New MP keywords

(More) female

BME

Law Finance

Small business

Londoners

Female White

‘Real life’Voluntary

sector

Law Local

Myths dispelled

Not many ‘Special

Adviser’ types

Mostly locally known

Not many family connections

Fewer councillors than

might expect

Diverse life experiences

Heidi Allen (South Cambs) Lucy Frazer (SE Cambs)

Conservatives in Cambridgeshire

• Scientist, small business • Barrister

Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge

& Malling)

Ranil Jayawardena (NE

Hampshire)

Conservatives

Ruth Smeeth (Stoke North) Keir Starmer (Holborn & St

Pancras)

Labour

Rebecca Long Bailey

(Salford)Helen Hayes (Dulwich)

Labour

Another certainty (maybe less

comforting)

National choice between Conservative and Labour leading

government

We’ll have one of these as tenant of 10 Downing

Street…

… thanks mostly to the electoral system

Bad at translating

votes into seats

High ‘barriers to entry’

Tactical squeeze

Relative majorities are enough to win

Safe seats

Ed or Dave depends on much more than their national

vote

How much do ‘ground game’

and incumbency matter?

Who does better out of gains from

Lib Dems?

How many seats will SNP take from Labour?

How many will UKIP win (or tip the balance in)?

Will Greens vote tactically?

Will there be big regional

differences?

Predicting the ‘unpredictable’

LSB ID Lad S EE EF Lad N

Con 269 279 283 283 283 281/2

Lab 302 302 293 281 283 284/5

Lib D 31 24 33 26 26 28/9

SNP 21 18 22 36 33 29/30

UKIP 5 4 4 2 3 6/7

Prediction points

NOBODY is predicting a

majority

Lab and LD do better in seat by

seat work

Con and SNP do better in ‘global’

prediction

Nobody expects a working

majority for a 2-party coalition

There should be a way of

arbitraging the Ladbrokes odds

New MPs if Labour wins…

FemaleVoluntary

sectorReal life

Law BME

Labour’s high fliers (if they make it)

KeirSTARMER

RowennaDAVIS

Jessica ASATO

Helen HAYES

SophyGARDNER

Clive LEWIS

Questions?