Conservatives Nightmare of Labour - Lib Dem Minority Government - Election Forecast 2015

By: Nadeem_Walayat

With just 2 days to go until Britain goes to the polls the desperation is evident on the faces of the politicians as the ferociously campaign for a handful more of seats that could enough to form the next government as one thing the opinion polls agree upon is that no major party will win an outright majority.

The latest opinion polls show little shift in the number of projected seats which raises the nightmare possibility for the Conservatives that they could win the most seats but still lose to a Labour - Lib-Dem minority government even if they also failed to secure enough seats for an majority as the following analysis illustrates:

	Market Oracle	May2015 .com	Electoralcalculus .co.uk	ElectionForecast .co.uk	The Guardian
	28th Feb	4th May	4th May	4th May	4th May
Conservative	296	273	280	279	275
Labour	262	268	276	270	269
SNP	35	56	52	51	54
Lib Dem	30	28	18	25	27
UKIP	5	2	2	1	3
Others	22	23	22	23	22

The opinion pollster seats forecasts average to:

• Conservatives : 276
• Labour : 271
• SNP : 53
• Lib Dems : 24

The problem for the Conservatives is that despite marginally being the largest party, in reality the Conservatives would face an overwhelming left of centre majority that the Labour party could capitalise upon to become the next government.

For instance the Conservatives + Lib Dems on 300 seats could be easily out voted by Labour+SNP on 324 seats even if Labour never agrees to formerly work with the SNP. Which means Labour + Lib Dems would form the next government as the SNP would support them to some extent so as to 'keep the Tories out' which has been the mantra of the SNP politicians for many weeks.

Therefore as the polls stand that despite the Conservatives being the largest party would not be able to form a workable government with the Lib-Dems as their Queens speech would be voted down by Labour + SNP even if it was greater watered down.

Which means that Labour wins by default unless the Conservatives are able to win enough seats to break the back of the Labour + SNP voting block. For the Conservatives to achieve such an outcome then they would need to win at least 290 seats for 290+28 Lib Dems on 318 seats to just out total Labour+SNP on 316, and that the Conservatives could also call on support from 8 DUP to total 326.

Therefore on the basis of the opinion polls the Conservatives are currently in the twilight zone of being approx 14 seats shorts of continuing the Coalition government with the Lib-Dems, whilst despite Labour pronouncements of wanting to go it alone instead will be busy preparing a long list of bribes for both the Lib-Dems and Scottish Nationalists so as to ensure they vote for a Labour Queens speech.

In terms of what I actually see as the most probable outcome for the general election primarily based on economic and market analysis rather than opinion polls, I refer to my in-depth analysis of 28th Feb that was most recently iterated in the following video:

• 28 Feb 2015 - UK General Election 2015 Seats Forecast - Who Will Win?
• 28 Feb 2015 - UK General Election 2015 - Forecasting Seats for SNP, LIb-Dems, UKIP and Others

UK General Election May 2015 Forecast Conclusion

My forecast conclusion is for the Conservatives to win 296 seats at the May 7th general election, Labour 2nd on 262 seats, with the full seats per political party breakdown as follows:

Therefore the most probable outcome is for a continuation of the ConDem Coalition government on 326 seats (296+30) where any shortfall would likely find support from the DUP's 8 seats.

The alternative is for a truly messy Lab-Lib SNP supported chaotic government on 327 seats (262+30+35) which in my opinion would be a truly disastrous outcome for Britain, nearly as bad as if Scotland had voted for independence last September.

Another possibility is that should the Conservatives do better than forecast i.e. secure over 300 seats but still fail to win an overall majority, then they may chose to go it alone with the plan to work towards winning a May 2016 general election.

The bottom line is that the opinion polls do not reflect how people will actually vote on May 7th when they are faced with a stark choice of steady as she goes ConDem government or take a huge gamble on Ed Milliband's Labour party. So in my opinion several millions of voters will chose to play it safe with ConDem which thus is the most probable outcome.

Also available a youtube video version of my forecast:

The bottom line is that a continuation of the Coalition government is the most probable outcome which means a combined total of at least 323 seats. Therefore come May 8th virtually all pollsters will have egg on their faces as the mainstream media will have flushed untold millions down the drain on commissioning opinion polls that turned out to be WRONG just as the polls were wrong in the run up to the Scottish referendum that was never a 50/50 proposition which at the time I concluded was mainly so as to allow pollsters to sell opinion polls and the mainstream press to sell copy and so it is the case with today's election campaign.

UK Saved From I.S. Threat But Scottish Independence Nightmare is Not Over!

There is another reason as well for why the polls were so close and that is one of SALES, the polling industry SELLING a tight election so that the gullible mainstream press would buy their polling services. Therefore painting a picture of a tight race by manipulating the data will have turned out to be a huge money spinner for the polling agencies.

My article concluded in the most probable forecast for the outcome of the result would be for at least show a 10% gap between NO and YES, and definitely not reflective of the mass hysteria.

Therefore the most probable outcome is inline with the polling ranges of before the YES campaigns intimidation and fear phase began to play a prominent role in the frenzy of campaigning of September that rather than a 50/50 tight race is more probably going to result in at least a 55% NO vote victory, and I would not be surprised if the NO vote even breaks above 60%!

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By Nadeem Walayat

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

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Nadeem Walayat has over 25 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of five ebook's in the The Inflation Mega-Trend and Stocks Stealth Bull Market series that can be downloaded for Free.

Nadeem is the Editor of The Market Oracle, a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication that presents in-depth analysis from over 1000 experienced analysts on a range of views of the probable direction of the financial markets, thus enabling our readers to arrive at an informed opinion on future market direction. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

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