What to do if you were a Liberal Democrat, I can't see a way back for them.
The more interesting question is assuming we have another hung parliament next time around will the remaining Lib Dems do another deal with the Conservatives.
They have lost over 40% of seats contested and must be feeling pretty bruised at the moment.
The Milliband factor should guarantee no overall Labour majority.
I'm guessing the seats that UKIP will target in the General Election will on balance be mostly Tory.
My guess at the moment for the general would be
Labour 34%
Tory 33%
UKIP 16%
Liberals 15%
Others 2%
Not sure how this would translate into seats but I think it could be tight.
Liberals

I reckon your UKIP vote is around 10% too high. My prediction is more along the lines of:
Tory 38%
Labour 31%
Lib Dems 20%
UKIP 6%
Others 5%

I also think this will be on the back of a lack of enthusiasm from Labour supporters as much as anything else. Ed will simply fail to motivate his flock to vote.

Octavious - have you seen Lord Ashcroft's poll? Your prediction is a million miles away from his snapshot. Do you think your prediction is wishful thinking rather than detailed analysis?

@ Maniac

Indeed I have, but I think the best way to answer is to quote Ashcroft himself.

"Across the battleground I found a 6.5% swing from the Conservatives to Labour – enough to topple 83 Tory MPs and give Ed Miliband a comfortable majority. But this is a snapshot, not a prediction. The research also found that most voters in these seats are optimistic about the economy, and only three in ten would rather see Mr Miliband as Prime Minister than David Cameron. As I have found in the Ashcroft National Poll, half of voters say they may change their mind before the election – and there is still a year to go"

It is a call to arms rather than a cry of panic. We have our goals, they are eminently achievable, and we are looking forward to the fight.

Tories still in denial about UKIP, how many votes must they take from you before you wake up and smell the cappafrappacino

@ Nigs

God, but you're tedious when you're parroting the Party line. UKIP's performance is nothing if not predictable. In the last two European elections they achieved 16 and 17 % (with the number of people voting for them actually falling). In the last two general elections they went from 3 to 3.5%.

I fully expect them to do well in the Euro. I can easily see them doubling their share of the vote (although it wouldn't surprise me too much if they didn't quite manage it). I can see them potentially doubling their general election vote share too (which is reflected in my prediction).

Saying they'll be up to 16% in a general election, however, is straight out of cloud cuckoo land. If Labour's hopes depend on self delusion of that scale then the Tories are in an even better position than I thought. Sadly, however, I don't think Labour high command have lost the plot quite that badly. Not yet anyway.

Octavious - it seems to me that different weight should be attached to polls.

The recent local and euro elections are actually votes by real people and should be given a good degree of weight.

Ashcroft's poll of 26000 which asks who would you vote for should be given far less weight but is it still informative as it was taken specifically in marginal seats.

Ashcroft's question about whether they could change their mind in the next twelve months should carry the least amount of weight. It would include people who are 99% certain but may change their mind as well as those who are 50/50 on who to vote for.

You seemed to want to reverse the weight given to each data set. That's fine if you are trying to encourage your troops, but on this forum where you don't need to pretend that everything is rosy in the Tory garden, I thought it would be better to be a little more honest.

@ Maniac

I really have no idea why you value the Eurozone election results as a direct measure of how the parties would do in a general election. 2004 and the Tories clearly beat Labour in the Euros. In the following general election Labour won a clear majority. People simply vote differently when it comes to Europe. This is no great secret or political spin. It's common knowledge and the evidence for it is clear to see.

European, not eurozone... Damned phone

Also, you were the one who mentioned Ashcroft's poll in the first place :p

You kind of prove my point by referring to euro 2004 and general election 2005. Labour have an inbuilt bias in general elections. Euro are PR. When Tories won euro 2004 they still couldn't overcome the bias for labour the following year. Now labour is ahead and will benefit from the bias next year it is even more likely to win.

The prevailing pattern since time immemorial is for the governing party to go from a position of weakness to relative strength as the general election approaches. The Tories also often experience a boost in the election proper over polls because of the "don't want to admit to voting Tory" factor. On top of that Labour have the drag factor of Miliband and the Tories will have the fair wind of the economy. Everything I see points to the election being very winnable.

Of course there will be a host of random factors that will play a part. The Scottish referendum may or may not have a large impact. Nothing is certain, but I would put the balance of probabilities in Conservative favour. Nigee's notion that Labour will win a larger share of the vote seems frankly laughable.

Octo - anecdotally you're pretty rubbish at predictions if we take your UKIP miscalculations into account. Even now when the Tories have had their bottom spanked you still miss the point and that is exactly why UKIP is doing so well, because of snooty arrogant posh boys thinking they know best because they had a private education.
It is ridiculous to the extreme.
Gove is an absolute arsewipe and it will take years to recover from his education 'reforms'.
Osborne is hailing an economic miracle, he thinks he has somehow single-handedly fixed the UK economy, it is politics for morons.
You've started believing your own propaganda but you fail to understand that the British public are a bit smarter than that, by the sounds of it a bit smarter than you.
You are self-delusional my friend

Time will tell, Nigs. Time will tell.

You watching this Nigs? It's really quite remarkable.The Tory vote is holding up rather better than I expected. The "Others" and the Lib Dems are being wiped out. I wonder if it will keep going like this...?

I have a lot of contradicting views. On the one hand I thought ukip couldn't do so well in the general election. On the other I think the lib dem vote will be lost, the tories won't do so well, but neither will labour. The general election will be interesting.

I am convinced that the Lib Dems are going to do ok in the general election. They are nothing if not survivors, and they have geared themselves up to defending their seats. I don't think they will lose all that many.

Nice to see the final death of the BNP :)

their advantage is that they have/will lose a lot of votes in places they don't hold. Places like eastleigh which they do actually have they manage to hold. Their percentile vote will be down a fair bit though, don't you think?

No doubt, but at the end of the day what matters is bums on seats.

What is surprising me most is how few votes UKIP appear to be taking off the Tories. UKIP up around 15%, Tories down around 4%, doesn't exactly support the narrative of UKIP decimating the Conservatives.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the Green Party with a similar number of MPs as UKIP, largely due to the fact that UKIP support is fairly universal around the country and is thus horrendously nerfed by FPTP.

I'm guessing that our Chancellor Osborne has even more respect for Nigel Farage now after seeing the UKIP European votes ..... because he is a twat !!

Another great result for the Coalition parties I see Octo, from these fabulous set of figures I predict a Conservative landslide at the General Election in 2015.
All is fine in the garden, everything is going exactly to plan and nobody has to worry about a thing. #Don'tpanic #TorieslickUKIPssaltyballs
Those spectacles you're wearing .... are they rose-tinted?

Did you watch the same election, Nigs? The Tory vote dropped by just 4%. I don't know what you've been putting in your coffee that makes that seem a disaster. UKIP didn't do as well as I feared they might, and Labour only just managed to get one more seat than us. This is your high water mark, and it's nowhere near where it needs to be.

As I have said before, this is another clear sign that the general election is very winnable. And the weirdness in the EU makes achieving real reforms look very achievable too. A good night

Octo - I have no real axe to grind here. I am not anti-European and I don't need to pretend to be anti-European to win back votes as does David . I don't advocate we have a vote to pull out of Europe because I know what economic damage that would do to our economy, just the talk of being out of Europe is unsettling and leads to disinvestment in our country, if you don't believe me look at Scotland now with the threat of Scottish independence.
I've got a tip for David Cameron, just be honest, tell me what you think and where you stand on the European issue, all of this flip-flopping is damaging our economy and your reputation.
If we get fundamental changes in European Laws there is no need to leave but Cameron thought by offering a referendum he could save his skin at these Euro elections, that ploy has obviously failed.
If the Tories start pandering to and playing footsy with UKIP now they will get punished at the General Election. There are a few senior Tories who have already thrown in the towel and called for joining of forces, a strong leader will resist at all costs, a weak leader will start to placate the bigots, where do you think all of the BNP votes have gone, UKIP of course.
It's gonna be interesting but I reckon it's make or break for Cameron leading up to the annual conference, if Labour are still leading in the polls come October there will be murmurings on the back benches.
Trust me, I'm a politician :-)

You were a politician, but you have either lost your edge or you never had one. Not even the Conservatives are daft enough to have a leadership election within spitting distance of an election. And frankly, of the 3 main parties, they are the least likely to change leaders in the near future. The Tories are well aware that DC continues to be more popular than the party, and he's done a damned good job.

Cleggy only remains in power because his chief rivals have managed to either get tarnished by the same brush (like Vince) or have managed to get themselves arrested. I have a lot of respect for Clegg, but if the Lib Dems had one decent alternative he'd be long gone.

The only party that could possibly gain from a leadership change is Labour. But every day that passes it will become more damaging to pull off, and the left of the party, for reasons I don't really understand, still want him.

What exactly don't you understand about Cameron's European position, by the way? He is a pro-European who believes that Europe needs reform and the British people need an opportunity to express their views. Where is the flip flopping? His position has been totally consistent for ages.

@Octavious – “The prevailing pattern since time immemorial is for the governing party to go from a position of weakness to relative strength as the general election approaches.” Agreed, this is usually partially achieved by a give away budget in the run up to the election. But we also need to remember that ‘prevailing patterns’ can be broken. The prevailing pattern up until last night was that the Tories always finished in the top two in National Elections. The prevailing pattern didn’t save them.

“The Tories also often experience a boost in the election proper over polls because of the "don't want to admit to voting Tory" factor.” Agreed, but I’m holding more store by the local and Euro polls where ashamed Tories can and do hide themselves away in a ballot box to make their mark ensuring no one sees their dastardly act.

“What is surprising me most is how few votes UKIP appear to be taking off the Tories. UKIP up around 15%, Tories down around 4%, doesn't exactly support the narrative of UKIP decimating the Conservatives.” I agree UKIP are not decimating the Tory vote. What is important is where Tories and Labour could get additional votes from in the Key marginals. I know this is very amateurish, but look at these correlations from last night’s count….

Correlation 1

CON – 4%,
BNP -5%
ED -1%
NO2EU -1%
UKIP +11%

Correlation 2

LD – 7%
GRN – 1%
SLP – 1%
LAB + 10%


It isn’t impossible to imagine some former Conservative, BNP, NO2EU and English democrats switching to UKIP and likewise it isn’t hard to imagine many former LDs, GRN and SLP voters switching to Labour. In fact as LD have traditionally being a centre party with around 50% being left of centre it isn’t hard to imagine that block deserting the LDs to go over to Labour. This block probably never wanted a coalition with Tories in the first place.

The problem this could cause for the Tories is that in 60-70 marginal seats Labour can triumph by going hard after LD voters. Add in the fact that UKIP is still likely to take more votes from Tories than Labour and you can see the problem.

“[Octavious;s] prediction is more along the lines of:
Tory 38%
Labour 31%
Lib Dems 20%
UKIP 6%
Others 5%”

I think your LD estimate is too high and your UKIP estimate too low. UKIP have done well in local and Euro elections and then poorly at the general election. Some of this drop off is explained by the wasted-vote-syndrome. people don’t like wasting votes and will not vote for parties who they perceive can’t win. If UKIP have crossed this perception threshold their vote could be a lot harder than we imagine.

If I’m right and your estimates for LD and UKIP are wrong then your other percentages are also incorrect.

I know I’ve made this point before, but do not under estimate the bias in the system. The Labour vote is extremely efficient compared to the Tories if they both get the same figure in % terms Labour gains far more seats.

In one sense, none of these predictions matter. But in another sense, analysing how a party can win by targeting certain voters could be absolutely crucial to their campaign success.

I see your line of thought with those correlations, but I think you're a long way off the mark. Outside the political classes and those of us who get excited about such things, the British public show very little loyalty to parties or political ideology. A Labour voter one year can easily be a Tory voter the next. The British voter is far more fluid than you give them credit for.

As for UKIP crossing the perception threshold, not even close. Even the Lib Dems, when they reached new heights in the polls before the last election, found their share plummeting back to usual levels when the votes were actually cast.

The Lib Dems core vote will hold, and they will pick up enough people who become sick to death of Ed and Dave to keep a respectable share. UKIP will shrink back below the double figures mark, and what will count is a straight fight between Miliband and Cameron. A fight for which Cameron is far better suited.

I'm willing to bet 100 that UKIP's national share of the vote is >10% and that they will win > 2 Seats at the next election.

I agree that public are fluid and getting fluider (if that's a word), but trends can still be drawn or what's the point in any data either of us propose?

I also agree that Cameron is better suited to the straight fight between him and Ed - most incumbants carry an advantage anyway, and in this case Ed hasn't inspired the electorate yet. But Ed is the leader who is making progress in elections and polls, that may well reverse, but he has some traction at the moment.

Out of interest what's your prediction for Newark?