Election predictions

Whilst most teenagers are out socialising and consuming alcohol, I'm at home working on spreadsheets and other such fun things. Over the period of a few long nights, I predicted the outcome of the 2010 election. This was made all the more difficult by the fact that the layout, size, and number of constituencies has changed pretty dramatically; there are very few left which will be the same as in the 2005 election. Therefore, rather than using the 2005 results, I used the notional results from the Guardian, which worked out the most likely outcome of the election had the 2010 constituencies been in place in 2005.

Using these results, I took educated guesses for each constituency - yes, all 650 of them - based upon three things:



1. Opinion polls

I took into account that Labour were, and still are, down in the polls when compared to the Conservatives. This did not play a big part, but I predicted that Labour constituencies with small Labour majorities and a powerful Conservative presence were more likely to swing towards the Tories, whereas Conservative held constituencies with a small majority were more likely to be retained.

2.Results of the past elections

I looked into the recent electoral history of the constituencies which could not be easily predicted. This allowed me to determine the second largest party, and which parties previously represented the constituency, making it easier to predict which party would take over if the incumbent lost their seat.

3. Majority of the previous candidate

If the majority of the current seat holder has been decreasing in successive elections, I was able to say with more confidence that they were more likely to lose their seat. Of course, for safe seats, the majority was the only decider in which party would win.

Here are my results:

 

275 seats

 

274 seats

 

70 Seats

 

31

A hung Parliament

I'm not convinced the outcome of the election could possibly be this close, but if it's similar to my prediction, there's going to be a lot of kerfuffle going on in Westminster. If you would like to see the spreadsheet, it's available for download here.