Archive for April, 2014

12 months to go, historical polls suggest a knife-edge election result

Posted in Historical polls, Politics on April 9th, 2014 by Leo – 7 Comments

In two previous posts, I looked at how we can use past polls and elections to shed light on what current polls tell us about the next election. Today, I’m publishing an update, on how to interpret polls one year before the election: less than a month from now.

The interesting bit

According to the historical trend, election results relate to polls 12 months before as:

Opposition lead at the election =

(0.5 x Opposition lead a year before the election) – 3.5pts

That is, on average, polling leads halve (whichever party is leading) and move 3.5pts in favour of the government in the 12 months before an election (the real-world logic of requiring these two steps isn’t obvious and there’s no suggestion they actually happen in this order – but it’s what the regression produces).

This means, a Labour lead of 6-8pts 12 months out would point towards a tie in vote share at the election – making Labour the largest party and probably just short of a majority:

'79 and '87 had seriously odd 12 months before the elections

This would suggest Labour’s current poll lead – 4pts – points towards a narrow Tory win on vote share at the election, of around 1.5pts. Again, this would probably put Labour as the largest party.

Should you pay any attention to this graph?

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