Guardian/ICM poll: Liberal Democrats set to gain at Labour's expense

[brooklynite]

Source: The Guardian

The Liberal Democrats are on course to sharply increase their number of MPs, largely at Labour's expense, a Guardian/ICM poll suggests today.

The unique ICM poll of voters in seats within the Lib Dems' grasp suggests the party's vote is climbing more strongly in Labour-held marginal seats than in Conservative ones.

The poll, carried out on Tuesday night, before the prime minister's criticism of a voter in Lib Dem-held Rochdale as "bigoted", shows that Labour and the Conservatives may lose seats to the Lib Dems. Nick Clegg can hope to increase his number of MPs to at least 80; 17 more than the party won in 2005 and the largest at any election since 1923.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/28/liberal-democrats-labour-marginals-poll

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Going to be a wild week in the UK...

[nyy1998]

1. If you go to the BBC Election Seat Locator

It could show how many seats each party could win:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8609989.stm
It's pretty cool, very similar to a lot of those Interactive Electoral Maps we have here.


Under this poll, the Conservatives would have 272 Seats, Liberal Democrats 249, and Labour 101 seats(of course, give or take 1-3 seats)

It's ridiculous how Liberal Democrat could be the clear winners and have the 2nd most seats. But that's UK politics work. And ppl here think the Electoral College is screwed up.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Meh - that one's low tech

If you want a hard-core geek's seat calculator, try this one with separate regional predictions (I've put in the numbers from last week's regional tallies of daily polls):

http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/index.html?userregpoll.html?CON=33.8&LAB=27.2&LIB=30.6&ScotCON=14&ScotLAB=36&ScotLIB=25&ScotNAT=21&NorthCON=20&NorthLAB=39&NorthLIB=34&NWestCON=29&NWestLAB=35&NWestLIB=30&YorksCON=28&YorksLAB=32&YorksLIB=32&WalesCON=26&WalesLAB=33&WalesLIB=26&WalesNAT=8&WMidsCON=38&WMidsLAB=28&WMidsLIB=27&EMidsCON=36&EMidsLAB=29&EMidsLIB=29&AngliaCON=43&AngliaLAB=20&AngliaLIB=30&SWestCON=37&SWestLAB=16&SWestLIB=42&LondCON=36&LondLAB=31&LondLIB=28&SEastCON=46&SEastLAB=17&SEastLIB=31®ion=All+GB+changed+seats&seat=--Show+all

[brooklynite]

3. I tend to agree

The major publications all assume seats shift based on a uniform shift in poll numbers, without taking into account any idiosyncricies of regional patterns or local candidates.

[Pab Sungenis]

5. If that happens

I predict a Lib-Lab coalition. Since tradition lets the Prime Minister have first crack at forming the government, he might just cut a deal with the LibDems to join in a coalition with them to keep the Conservatives out of government. Of course, the two big hurdles to them forming that coalition would be that Clegg would need to be PM, not Brown, and Labour would have to sign off on election reform which would further cement its position in the dustbin.

[Pab Sungenis]

4. Just a proper re-alignment.

The Liberals (now the LibDems) are finally poised to retake the position they had before Labour came along.

The "third way" may have kept them in power for 12 years, but it ended up destroying them in the end.