So, the polls in GE19 have flatlined at a stable 8-12 pt Tory lead. Unless the polls are flat out wrong, possible though unlikely, all remaining action is in tactical voting. How strong would it need to be to matter? Time to crank up the GE predictor. 1/n livedataoxford.shinyapps.io/TacticalVoting…
I've altered this GE prediction model I have been playing with all election season to show what happens if Labour / LD voters follow tactical voting guides. Here I am using @BestForBritain's recommendations and their MRP estimates for each constituency in England & Wales 2/n
@BestForBritain When you open up the Shiny app the polling numbers it has reflects the average polling for England and Wales in BfB's poll. They are slightly closer than for UK as a whole since Labour is polling terribly in Scotland. For E&W they give C339, L220, LD9, G1, PC3. 3/n
@BestForBritain If a working majority starts at 320 the Tories are well over that excluding Scotland where BfB estimate they will win 9 seats (similar to YouGov). So let's assume Tories need 311 England and Wales seats. What level of Lab / Lib tactical voting would it take to get there? 4/n
@BestForBritain If we use the polling average from the BfB MRP and their constituency estimates, we can pull the tactical voting lever on the app and we hit this point at 0.36 - 36% of LD voters would need to vote Labour in a constituency where BfB recommends they do (& vice versa). 5/n
@BestForBritain That's pretty high! If 50% switch then the Tory E&W seat count drops to 303, plus the Scots Tories gives us 312. So even at 50% tactical voting it won't be a super strong anti-Tory coalition - indeed it might rely on DUP 😬 6/n
@BestForBritain In extremis, if there were perfect tactical voting, following the BfB recommendations, and assuming these polls, the Cons seat share could be pushed down to 263 and Labour would overtake them as largest party with 276 in E&W (LD 29). 7/n
@BestForBritain Obvs that would mean a Corbyn government but note how hard it is for Labour to get a majority without Scottish seats, even if they got the full LD tactical vote. Right now there is only one party in Britain that can win majorities and it ain't Labour. 8/n
@BestForBritain If you switch the 'baseline' lever at the bottom of the app you can see what happens if we use uniform national swing from 2017 rather than the BfB MRP estimates. Similar story. No tactical voting means 328 Cons seats in E&W. The crossover point is 37% tactical voting. 9/n
@BestForBritain Now is 36-37% tactical voting possible? Maybe. After all most of this is a squeeze of LD voters, so given survey averages we are talking about 4-5% of the electorate who would vote LD voting for Labour instead. 10/n
@BestForBritain But that might not be necessary. BfB themselves note that if tactical voting is concentrated in a few seats - 36 in their calculations - then it just takes 40,000 odd votes to swing the election. That's a fraction of a percent of the electorate! 11/n
@BestForBritain So that's the key thing about tactical voting - it needs to be very very targeted to be most effective - if you just change tactical voting en masse it takes a LOT to matter, at least at current polling. 12/n
@BestForBritain But equally that's why, as @alexwickham noted the Tories are going to worry about the two 'T's' - tactical voting and turnout. That's the game right there. 13/n
@BestForBritain @alexwickham Please mess around with the levers and numbers at livedataoxford.shinyapps.io/TacticalVoting…
And as for other alliances? Well the Brexit alliance is baked into the BfB MRP estimates already. And as @leonardocarella and I showed, it likely makes very little difference.14/n
ukandeu.ac.uk/what-impact-wo…
And as for other alliances? Well the Brexit alliance is baked into the BfB MRP estimates already. And as @leonardocarella and I showed, it likely makes very little difference.14/n
ukandeu.ac.uk/what-impact-wo…
@BestForBritain @alexwickham @leonardocarella And when we were writing this, it seemed very unlikely Jo Swinson would ever countenance an alliance with Labour as she was trying to woo Tory voters. I think that strategy has changed/failed so I suppose LDs could still affect things by sending their voters Labour's way. 15/n
@BestForBritain @alexwickham @leonardocarella Will that happen? I rather doubt it. LD polling still higher than 2017, reflecting distrust of Corbyn in their base. Not sure it can be squeezed more. But if it is, the game's still on. Otherwise the election will head where it's been heading a long time: PM Boris & Brexit. n/n
