January 23, 2015
Which seat might see the highest turnout?
Turnout across the whole of the UK at the 2010 general election was 65.1%. This was up almost four percentage points on 2005, but a fair way below the 78.8%…
January 22, 2015
Election gains and losses: the less that changes, the less things will stay the same
The result of the 2015 election will be underpinned by a curious and slightly counter-intuitive concept: the less that changes on polling day, the more that could change the day…
January 21, 2015
What the polls will and won’t tell us about the election: a reminder
As we approach the end of this parliament and the start of the official election campaign, it’s vital to remember two things about the opinion polls. First, they won’t tell…
January 20, 2015
Seats to watch: Ukip, the Greens and the SNP
I’ve already published my selection of seats that I think will best illustrate how well or how badly Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats fare in the election. Now I’m turning…
January 19, 2015
Why there’ll be at least 21 polling days in this year’s election, not one
Three months from today, the first votes in the general election will already have been cast. So says the journalist Michael Crick, and he makes a persuasive case. For even…
January 18, 2015
Forget Thanet South and Nigel Farage; Ukip’s best chances lie elsewhere in the UK
I’ve long argued that Nigel Farage will struggle to win the seat of Thanet South. I said as much the moment he announced his intention to stand for Ukip in…
January 17, 2015
What the Green party’s performance in 2010 could tell us about its ‘surge’ in 2015
The talk this week of a Green party “surge” has reminded me of when the same word was applied to Ukip last year. In both cases I prefer to use…
January 16, 2015
The decline of the Merseyside Tory
If Esther McVey loses her seat of Wirral West on 7 May, the Conservatives will have been wiped out across the whole of Merseyside. It would be the final act…
January 15, 2015
‘With light music from Bernard Monshin and his Rio Tango Band’: how election results used to be broadcast
Among the delights to be found on the BBC’s Genome website are some cracking examples of how the corporation used to cover elections on the radio. In case you don’t know,…
January 14, 2015
Seats to watch: the bellwethers
Though the boundaries of our parliamentary constituencies are redrawn regularly, there’s enough continuity to allow for the existence of what are known as bellwethers: seats whose result time-and-again mirrors exactly…
UK elections 2015 