Having a social scientist for a sister (not sure if that's the correct term, but sounds better than clever git), I had a healthy, albeit one sided discussion about politics at the weekend.
Nothing worse than a layman trying to sound knowledgeable, but regardless of your politics I think few people would favour a coalition government of any persuasion. Media speculation abounds that Labour is highly unlikely to win hands down, which I tend to agree with and I genuinely worry what leadership a Labour coalition would bring the country.
Enter then the element of science and the creation of a data driven model to analyse the data.
So whats the conclusion of this data modelling? Well long story short...
- If 5% of UKIP votes switch to Conservative, Conservative wins outright with an increased majority.
- If the UKIP votes switch to Labour, there is no outright winner but Conservatives still win the majority of seats.
- Labour needs Conservatives and the SNP to lose a lot of votes to win the election.
- Lib Dems could prevent Conservatives from winning outright if they recover a chunk of the votes they lost in 2015
In other words, forgetting media spin, sound bites and party propaganda, it is technically impossible for Labour to win outright.
Rather than rip off her blog post, you can read Sharon's analysis yourself and make your own conclusions.
Forecasting the 2017 UK general election - Joining Dots
Any thoughts, good bad or indifferent?
