Scotland: Conservatives closing the gap on Labour
By: News Archive
With two days until the Scottish Parliament election, the Conservatives have a chance of overtaking Labour – but Kezia Dugdale's party is still more likely than not to finish in second place to the Scottish National Party.
That's the forecast of the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Dr Chris Hanretty, a researcher in the School of Politics. Dr Hanretty uses national and constituency-level polling data, together with historical information on the relationship between polls and outcomes, to forecast elections.
Dr Hanretty said: "There's a one-in-four chance the Conservatives could either beat Labour or finish equal on seats – and they're exceedingly likely to register their best-ever seat tally. It's gone from a what-if scenario to a real risk for Labour.”
The prediction model tries to simulate parties' performance around the country using constituency polling data supplied by the polling company TNS-BMRB. Using this data, the model is able to forecast outcomes in each constituency and in each region.
The seat forecasts from the model are:
- Scottish National Party: most likely to win 70 seats, up 1 seat from 2011. 90 per cent likely to win between 66 and 74 seats
- Labour: most likely to win 26 seats, down 11 seats from 2011. 90 per cent likely to win between 21 and 30 seats
- Conservatives: most likely to win 22 seats, up 7 seats from 2011. 90 per cent likely to win between 17 and 27 seats
- Liberal Democrats: most likely to win 5 seats, up 0 seats from 2011. 90 per cent likely to win between 2 and 8 seats
- Greens: most likely to win 6 seats, up 4 seats from 2011. 90 per cent likely to win between 3 and 9 seats
No other party is forecast to win a seat.
Dr Hanretty said: “What's notable is not just the fact that the SNP looks set for another majority, but also the size of their lead over the second-placed party, whichever party that might turn out to be. They might only win one more seat than they did in 2011, but still end up a good 40 seats ahead of the second-placed party.”
The model also predicts the SNP is 99 per cent likely to win a majority at Holyrood.
Dr Hanretty, whose work on electoral forecasting has been used by BBC’s Newsnight and the statistical analysis website FiveThirtyEight, said: "I got in trouble last year for ruling out a Conservative majority. I don't want a repeat this year by ruling in an SNP majority. It's a one-in-a-hundred chance that they miss out – but as we've seen from the football, even five-thousand-to-one chances come in from time to time.”
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