The YouGov projection
YouGov report:
Different seats behave in different ways. Parties may do better or worse in different parts of the country, or in areas that are more pro or anti Brexit, or where different parties are in contention. To use the old cliche, a general election is not one contest – it is 650 individual races.
MRP is a polling technique aimed at solving that problem, a way of using big samples sizes to project figures onto smaller geographical areas. It works by using an extremely large number of interviews to model people’s voting preferences based upon their demographics (age, gender, education, past vote and similar factors) and the local political circumstances (such as whether they live in a Conservative or Labour seat? Is a pro-Brexit area? Is there an incumbent MP?).
The release of our first MRP model projection for the 2019 election suggests that this time round the Conservatives are set for a majority. If the election were held today we project that the Tories would win 359 seats (a gain of 42 from 2017), Labour would win 211 (down by 51), the SNP 43 (up eight) and the Liberal Democrats 13 (a gain of one). Plaid Cymru would retain their four seats, the Greens would keep their single seat, and the Brexit Party would not take any seats at all.
So this projects a Conservative majority of 68 seats. Of course the model may be inaccurate and things may change the next two weeks.
But lets hope it is correct, for two reasons.
The first is that only a decent Conservative majority can solve the Brexit paralysis.
The second is that Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister is a horrifying thought – not just his policies but also his lack of actual ability to lead.
The projection is based on a total of 100,319 interviews, conducted over the past week, the last of which took place in the afternoon on 26th November. As with all models, there is uncertainty. Taking into account the margins of error, our model puts the number of Conservative seats at between 328 and 385, meaning that while we can be confident that the Conservatives would currently get a majority, it could range from a modest one to a landslide.
100,000 interviews is a lot but of course that is only 150 or so per electorate, hence the variability in the projection.